The exhibition Mutlu Çerkez: 1988 – 2065 and its accompanying monograph form a long awaited eulogy to an artist whose influence has remained largely unacknowledged since his unforeseen passing in 2005. It would not be conceited to say that the format of the exhibition was fated by the artist, but there is a general feeling that it comes as a late arrival. As Justin Clemens once pointed out, Çerkez's work explored exactly these “vicissitudes” of determination that are latent within the life of any artist—how art history and the popular consciousness segment an artist's life into periods, gathers together all the matter from its orbit, and simplifies it at its termination. Introspection and retrospection were inherent to the task that Çerkez had set himself in making his art. There was a burden to it, a weighted and incredibly sad vision of labour that brought the serial demand of the production line into being with the banality of life.