Closest Distance: Francesco Albano, Rasim Aksan, Hussein Chalayan, Kendell Geers, İdil İlkin, Arik Levy, Serkan Özkaya, Seza Paker, Arslan Sükan, Ali Emir Tapan, Ayça Telgeren, Elif Uras, Viron Erol Vert

Galerist is pleased to present ‘Closest Distance’, a group exhibition contemplating the use of line, from June 27 to July 26, 2014.  Line lies at the base of each composition, sketch or design; it is the basic language with which visual thinking was expressed in all times and geographies. Each artist has a unique use of line in their artistic processes, charging it with different meanings and sentiments in a variety of materials.

Line can function as illustrative device, as geometric ornamentation or structural blueprint. Serkan Özkaya’s line drawings, which are on view for the first time, are remakes of some of the most commonly depicted themes in art history in the simplest possible form. The way Özkaya’s historical cultural icons are made recognizable by just the minimum description stand as praise to subtlely.  The lines on Elif Uras’ ‘Line Belly’ emphasize the feminine form of the delicate ceramic sculpture, which embodies contrasting positions on color, form, material and ornamentation in Eastern and Western traditions. Another reinterpretation of tradition is Ayça Telgeren’s ‘Forgive Me My Love’, where the artist uses ‘kaatı’ technique to create an otherworldly composition with graphic lines made out of hand cut paper. In Hussein Chalayan’s ‘Airmail Dress’, instead of a preliminary sketch, the structure and design is determined by the standards of the found object. One of Chayalan’s early works, the piece manifests the artist’s contemplations on migration, displacement and distances. 

As the symbol for logic and reason, line is used to establish borders and boundaries; yet, it can also appear as gestural marks floating as independent shapes in space, activating senses. With ‘You Look like a TV Sitting on a Fridge’ Seza Paker resists the limits of language and the instinct to understand the world through categories. In ‘Untitled (Patron)’ Paker’s lines divide not just geographical territories but also the human body, questioning the imposition of authority on space and its implications. Kendell Geers ‘Ligne de Fuite’ paintings reference establishment of rational thought and use of perspective during the Renaissance. Although the barbed wire fence imagery implies the limits imposed by social constructs, the multi-layered surface reveals illuminate depths in another, metaphysical dimension. Both in Ali Emir Tapan’s layered mirror reliefs and Idil Ilkin’s video ‘Rorschach Test’, gestural stains leak from the subconscious. Tapan laboriously engraves his mind maps in to the mirrors’ glaze; Ilkin drops ink blotchs into a bathtub giving life to her inner journey. The fluidity in Ilkin’s and Tapan’s shapes is echoed in Viron Erol Vert’s graceful drawings and Francesco Albano’s mystifying sculpture. Vert with artful magic turns elegant flowers to fragile nudes; Albano gives linear form to a fleshy arm reaching out to spotlight the sense of touch.

In ‘Closest Distance’, Arslan Sükan, Rasim Aksan and Arik Levy work with line to create the illusion of three-dimensionality. Referencing Op-Art, Sükan manipulates photographic image to explore the tension between reality and fantasy. Levy with repetitive brush strokes in acrylic creates black holes on paper; these spots, which also read as irises, trigger the viewer to meditate on the act of looking. Rasim Aksan, in his hyperrealist drawing of grass and lady bugs, perhaps evidences the most common yet skillful way dots and lines bring about a convincing picture of our physical world.  ‘Closest Distance’ reveals varied approaches to line in artistic practices and evidences the way line works as a fingerprint that provides the viewer with the most direct, intimate and naked insight into an artists’ oeuvre.