Arter welcomes spring with three exhibitions

Three concurrent solo exhibitions of new pieces by Bahar Yürükoğlu, Murat Akagündüz and Şener Özmen will be at Arter Gallery until May 15.

Yürükoğlu's exhibition, "Flow Through," takes as its departure the artist's experiences of traveling to the Arctic Circle in 2015. Yürükoğlu employed the media of installation, videos, photographs and sound that blur the boundaries between the natural and the artificial through experiments with light, space and color. Akagündüz's exhibition, "Vertigo," features a new series of white on white oil paintings portraying some of the world's highest mountain peaks as seen on Google Earth. Using digital data to depict nature, Akagündüz refers to the transformation of the human-nature relationship with the advancement of technology. Özmen's exhibition, "Unfiltered," focuses on platforms that allude to a vernacular architectural wooden form used in hot climates to spend summer nights outdoors. In the allocated space, these wooden structures function as planes for revisiting desires or creating new memories. Özmen explores how an artist can escape a recognized and fixed identity.

'FLOW THROUGH'

Curated by Duygu Demir, Yürükoğlu's exhibition is fed by the artist's experiences during her travels to the Arctic Circle in 2015, both in the summertime when the sun does not set and during the winter months when darkness prevails. She creates fictional spaces based on the dualities she observed in the Arctic, chiefly dealing with presence and absence, past and future and nature and civilization with mining towns and advanced technology science villages. Inspired by melting icebergs and polar bear postcards, the exhibition presents Yürükoğlu's installations combining light, color and sound.

'VERTIGO'

Curated by Aslı Seven, Akagündüz's exhibition presents a series of white on white oil paintings of the tallest mountain peaks from around the world as seen on Google Earth, exploring the transformation of the human-nature relationship within the landscape tradition. How is the act of painting transformed when we rely on the mediation of digital data to depict an actual physical landscape? In a satellite view of Earth, the paintings represent a vertical perspective with the horizon nowhere to be found. Our sense of being grounded is disrupted, and a sense of vertigo sets in.

'UNFILTERED'



Curated by Süreyya Evren, Özmen's exhibition tackles the concept of recognition and expands into the artist's individual demands and desires that arise after being recognized. Exploring the position of artists who have been associated with a fixed social identity, the exhibition revolves around platforms that allude to a vernacular architectural wooden form used in hot climates to spend summer nights outdoors. In the exhibition these pieces function as planes for revisiting desires and creating new memories.