Nuri Kuzucan

In his paintings Nuri Kuzucan (b.1971) explores intimate spaces and urban
landscapes. He is concerned with how the modern city affects the dweller
and unravels the solitude through abstract forms that resemble masses of
concrete. Depicting imaginary spaces, Kuzucan makes his paintings by
layering paint, starting with an arangement of small geometric pieces that
end up creating a discernible whole. The artist expresses his reaction to
modernism also in his choice of material: the paper tape he uses
consolidates the impact he seeks to create upon the viewer. Kuzucan’s
works have a fundamental context: to imagine a three-dimensional space
within two-dimensional space, and he excels in doing this through his
personal power of observation and a contemporary reflection on the culture
of seeing.
“Open Space” (2004), “Traffic” (2006) and “Are you Happy?” (2008)
introduced Kuzucan’s bewildering sense of perspective. In “Plan” (2010), the
artist moved away from the more intimate wanderings in his earlier shows
and presented a birds-eye view on to the city. His first solo show at Edouard
Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong, “ISTHK/HKIST” showed how metropolises,
from Istanbul to Hong Kong, have become signifiers and quantifiers of
modern living. His second solo exhibition at the Edouard Malingue Gallery in
Hong Kong “The Blissful Defect”(2016) built on the works from the first solo
exhibition focusing on the appearance of the modern city and its anonymity.
His first exhibition in Mainland China “Name”(2018) took a stronger look on
the city of Istanbul and the understanding of its historical and cultural
background. With his two year project titled "Open Space 2" (2020),
Kuzucan tested the grounds for constructing a neutral plastic space through
the his works and the names he invited to the time and space generated by
the exhibition at GALERIST. Last but not least, his most recent exhibition
titled “Passage” at ARTER, curated by Nilüfer Şaşmazer, features works that
revolve around dualities such as chaos/order, light/shadow,
emptiness/fullness, surface/depth, and interior/exterior.
Nuri Kuzucan studied and majored in Painting and mastered in Social
Sciences from the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in Istanbul. Kuzucan

had multiple solo exhibitions in Istanbul and Hong Kong and participated in
numerous group shows in Basel, Berlin and Dubai. Nuri Kuzucan’s work has
been exhibited in public collections such as the Pera Museum in Istanbul
and has been recently added to the permanent collection of the Museum of
Modern Art Istanbul and the permanant contemporary art collection of the
Vehbi Koç Foundation. In the event of his first solo show in Hong Kong, an
extensive publication has been created on the artists work accompanied with
texts by leading international commentators in the field of Contemporary Art.
Key contributors include: Levent Calikoglu (Chief Curator, Museum of
Modern Art Istanbul), Arianne Koek (CERN Residency Programme), HG
Masters (Editor-at-large, Art Asia Pacific) and Bige Orer (Director, Istanbul
Biennale).