In Conversation with Seçkin Pirim

What does working with a massive and surprising material like marble mean to you? With such richly textured materials, what kind of starting point, what inner call do you notice?

I’ve been working with marble for about three years. Before that, I honestly had no experience with it. My fascination with marble actually comes from ancient cities; the texture and the feeling of those places have always been an inner journey for me. My marble-sculpture adventure, which began thanks to Alpay Mermer, excited me deeply. As divine as the material can look, it’s just as demanding to work with, but today’s technology makes it a bit easier and speeds up the path to the result. It’s impossible not to form an inner bond with a material that has been used for thousands of years.

What does producing site-specific work mean to you? How do you build the relationship between place, material, and form?

I think site-specific work is exciting for most sculptors. For me, it also creates a new way of thinking. When you make work for a place, different modes of thought emerge, along with different problems and, of course, different questions. The site’s “data” brings new questions: from the angle the viewer will see it, to how sunlight enters the space, to the relationships the site enables, and the relationship the work will build with the viewer. These can look like limiting questions for some artists, but for me they turn into an exciting game. For example, the way Michelangelo adjusted the proportions of David according to the viewing angle of the niche where it would stand has always fascinated me. Lately, in my site-specific works, I care about creating a dialogue with the viewer and blending with them, and I often try to design this through sculptures that can be walked through.

How important is it for you to see the stone’s “lived-in” quality, the marks formed over time, in the material? How much do these traces enter your projects?

My admiration for stone comes from ancient sites, and their weathering is part of that. Moss on the surface, erosion over time, a layer of dust, these things feel right to me. That’s why I’m not unhappy when time leaves its marks on my marble sculptures; on the contrary, it’s something I enjoy. Even if it can look like the work is being altered, I believe this aging adds a new meaning to the sculpture.

Within your art-and-design practice, which stage still excites you the most: the first touch of the material, the form settling into a space, or the moment it meets the viewer? Why?

The stage that excites me most has always been making, the production process itself. Because that’s where “spontaneous mistakes” await you, and those mistakes can return as the thrill of a new work. Once I finish a sculpture, it leaves my world and creates its own space of freedom. That meditative state I experience during the process is what makes me happiest. Of course, what happens after it meets the viewer is important too, but it’s more important for the viewer. The bond the viewer forms with the sculpture, and the meaning they draw from their own feelings, belongs to them and the work. I’ve always been a studio person, so the studio process is the part I can speak about most easily.

How do ideas like sustainability, locality, or social context find a place in your work with massive materials? Do you have approaches such as using regional stone, local craftsmanship, or a relationship with technology?

I often use technology during production. I feel the time it saves gives me extra room to make new works or to think. On the viewer’s side, there can sometimes be a common assumption: that using technology in production reduces the value of the work. Of course, I don’t agree, especially in today’s world and contemporary art. I’m also insistent about local craftsmanship and local material. Take marble, for example: Turkey’s richness in marble and stone means there’s no real need to look elsewhere.

If you were to design a decorative object for Minval, thinking in terms of material, scale, function, and design context, what would you imagine? And what would you want to tell the user through that object?

I’ve designed usable objects from time to time, though I’ve realized only a few. Because there’s a very fine line between design and art, and you need to draw that line clearly. It matters that design doesn’t put pressure on your art. That’s why I called the objects I made “usable sculptures.” For instance, I once designed a bench and called it “a sculpture you can sit on.” For Minval, I’d prefer to create something that gets people talking when you place it on a table. Whether it’s ergonomic or extremely comfortable to use would be secondary—maybe even third. What matters more is that it functions as a collectible object. Philippe Starck’s lemon squeezer doesn’t really squeeze lemons well or separate the seeds, yet it became an iconic design object of its time and entered millions of homes. That’s the kind of approach I’d choose. If I were to make an object for Minval, I’d think along these lines.

Looking ahead, within the context of massive materials and site-specific work, is there still a “challenge” or an untouched field waiting for you? If something had changed five years from now, what would you want it to be?

My excitement for creating never really changes. I produce with the same enthusiasm I had as a student. That’s why I have many sculptures in my mind—ones I don’t yet know, waiting to be discovered. I want to make more site-specific works; they excite me and push me into other ways of thinking. If something had changed five years from now, I’d want to have more projects on an international scale, and then I’d start wondering about the next five years.