Spotlight: In Artist Lal Batman’s Immersive Exhibition, Bright Colors and Whimsical Works Belie Darker Themes

Artnet Gallery Network December 15, 2023 ShareShare This Article

What You Need to Know: On view through February 4, 2024, gallery Anna Laudel in is presenting the exhibition “Lal Batman: The Floor is Lava,” the artist’s debut solo show in Germany. Featuring a diverse range of mediums—everything from sculpture to video and sound works—together, the exhibition marks a distinct evolution in Batman’s practice and artistic approach. Inspired by the children’s game of the same name, “The Floor is Lava” is alternately poignant and playful, tapping into pervasive and complex themes of anxiety, trauma, and catastrophe, while simultaneously creating bright and colorful landscapes and scenarios that speak to childlike imaginations. The arrangement of the works in the show invite viewers to traverse the space similar to the show’s namesake game, conceiving of the floor transforming between steps into lava.

About the Artist: Contemporary Turkish artist Lal Batman (b. 2001) spent her formative years between Istanbul and Bursa, a city two hours outside of the country’s capital. Batman attended a fine arts focused high school, after which she enrolled at Yeditepe University, Istanbul, where she further studied plastic and fine arts. While pursuing her studies, the artist consistently took part in a range of related projects, from curation and workshops to symposia and panels—such as the IVth International Athens Art Symposium by UNESCO in 2017—which takes place in Europe, Asia, and South America. Previously with Anna Laudel gallery, Batman organized the group exhibition “Love over Entropy” (2020), and the gallery showed her work in a solo presentation at Zonamaco, Mexico City. She currently splits her time living and working between Istanbul and Belgrade, Serbia.

Why We Like It: Batman’s exhibition “The Floor is Lava” highlights her unique ability to synthesize wittiness with deep emotion. Foreground Batman’s artistic vernacular, developed over the course of both her academic and professional careers, the works across the show seamlessly move between figuration and abstraction, as well as two and three dimensions, engaging with ideas around time, space, and the relationships between artwork and audience. Paintings featuring fantastical landscapes or otherworldly vignettes spill out of the frame via small sculptures placed on the floor before them; wall-spanning scenes are offset with cutouts featuring pixelated images; and self-composed soundtracks reminiscent of ASMR promise to lull visitors into a trance-like state. Immersive and sensorially consuming, each work and the show on the whole take viewers on a journey through Batman’s creative vision and offer new ways of seeing and understanding reality as we know it.

See inside the exhibition below.