Always Forward: Nazım Ünal Yılmaz

Galerist is pleased to present Vienna based artist Nazım Ünal Yılmaz’s first solo exhibition at the gallery titled ‘Always Forward’ from October 27 to December 10, 2022. In the exhibition, which brings together works that are rooted in the artist’s scepticism towards cultural politics and historiography, Yılmaz presents his recent works which are – in his own words – 'growth-oriented', and find themselves close to an economic model that can neither be considered democratic nor ecological.

Yılmaz presents a new visual and aesthetic approach born out of the criticism of the mental, emotional and social conditions that mould the artworks and the models of experiencing them through research and new ways of interpretations with the audience. The works not only contain the unique visual language of the artist, but also speak to Yılmaz's uncompromising scepticism of all models, whether capitalist or communist.

In a sense, with his abstract-expressive, a-political compositions that he displays with homage to the pioneering painters of both Turkish and European contemporary art history, Yılmaz questions the limits of honesty, according to which the values of the art market determine the index of reality and sincerity. The artist exposes himself to the audience as a one-man cabaret that gets more crowded as he unclothes.

“Yılmaz keeps an anti-social distance with the greedy heirs of a history that is sceptical of going 'Always Forward', in favour of the nature of the imagination. This is a straightforward attitude, which goes against life and death, raising the chance of immortality with every new gaze that is directed towards the artworks. As the exhibition argues, this is related to our ability to accept every element we may interact with in art, in life and in the world, in all aspects, and coexist accordingly, rather than going 'always forward' in a frenzy.” (*)

(*) Excerpt from Evrim Altuğ’s (AICA) exhibition text titled ‘Looking up and down on ‘Always Forward’, October 2022.