[su_dropcap style=”simple” size=”2″]P[/su_dropcap]i Artworks Istanbul/ London’s booth at this years’ Contemporary Istanbul will showcase a selection of recent work covering a variety of mediums. The gallery has been a major participant in Contemporary Istanbul since 2006, and will use this year’s booth to give a broad overview of recent and exciting works by a generous section of our represented artists. The exhibition will include work by painters Yeşim Akdeniz and Allen Grubesic who the gallery began representing in October this year, alongside the following established artists who have been represented by Pi Artworks for many years: Volkan Aslan, Nancy Atakan, Nezaket Ekici, Horasan, Nejat Satı, Gülay Semercioğlu, Mehmet Ali Uysal’s.
Yeşim Akdeniz will exhibit paintings from her new series Mr. Jung and Me. Artist and writer Merve Ünsal describes her visual language within this series as ‘’… filled with social and cultural subtexts that have a unique ability to synthesize by referring to the cultural history of the 20th century.”
Volkan Aslan will show new work that was recently exhibited as part of the group exhibition Disquiet that was curated by Nat Muller and spread across Pi Artworks Istanbul and Galeri Zilberman. These brand new works are created with an ironic approach, combine Renaissance style statues with neon lights, and satisfy the viewer both visually and conceptually.
The products of Nancy Atakan’s interdisciplinary practice deal with the invisible sides of social life and human relations. At Contemporary Istanbul, she will be showing new video works titled Incomprehensible World and Sacred Solitude that deconstruct the past before bringing the pieces together again in her own style. Performance artist Nezaket Ekici also has video work included in the gallery’s booth. Her work, titled But all that is not gold documents an iteration of a performance of the same name she did at Istanbul Modern last May. In the performance, the artist struggles and finally succeeds in breaking out of the cramped golden cage she starts the performance encased within.
For Swedish artist Allen Grubesic, this will be the first major showcase of his works in Istanbul, and an excellent introduction to his practice prior to his solo exhibition at Pi Artworks Istanbul in April. Juxtaposed with this young artist will be Horasan, one of Turkey’s most important and influential portrait artists. He works across a wide range of media, including ink drawings, printmaking and photography, but he is best known for his large-scale oil paintings, examples of which will be showcased at the fair. His most recent body of work focuses on the toll of time, man’s quest for immortality and the defiance of the human spirit in the face of the ravages of age.
Nejat Satı whose latest solo show, Nefs, continues until the 27th of December at Pi Artworks Istanbul will show work from the same series as that within his solo exhibition. Sati mixes acrylic paint with a viscous, quick-drying gel to create his own signature material, which is applied to his canvases by either brush or squeegee. In this latest series layers of colour create a flesh like structure and reflect both the body and the soul.
Gülay Semercioğlu’s signature style involves carefully looping kilometers of thin, colored, enamel coated silver wire around a series of small screws that have been precisely laid out across a firm wooden backing frame. This filament, only slightly thicker than a human hair, is repeatedly interwoven and overlapped and then pulled taut, resulting in a rigid metallic mesh that manipulates the light and creating three-dimensional forms. In her recent works, the wooden backing frame surrenders itself to the flow of the wires and turn into an essential part of the composition.
Mehmet Ali Uysal, whose site-specific installation titled Skin 2 (2010) was recently been selected in November this year alongside David Mach’s Out of Order (1989) and Michelangelo’s David (1504) on a list of top ten public sculptures by the British newspaper The Independent. For the fair the artist will present new gallery scale work that sets the material free from its rough and fixed nature and plays clever tricks addressing the nature of perception. ✪
