1 Ocak 2015

Pi ARTWORKS London Art Gallery – MEHMET ALİ UYSAL – Block



MEHMET  ALİ  UYSAL

Block

12 February – 28 March 2015

press release

Mehmet Ali Uysal creates large scale installations that are integrated into the material of the building they are
situated in, transforming the venue and altering both the viewer’s perception of the space as well as how they
move around it.  Today, the process of creating, exhibiting, and perceiving contemporary art is deeply
intertwined with the austere, white walled gallery space that continuously erases traces of its history
in order to look perfect and untouched. Uysal wants to invert this tradition and revive the gallery space
as a living entity by interfering directly in the structure of the white cube and deconstructing
both its formal characteristics and inherited traditions.

Uysal’s recent Peel series creates the illusion that the claddings of a gallery’s walls has become like the
skin of a dissected body that is malleable enough to be literally pinched, ripped and torn off.
In other recent work, he takes other common facets of the gallery space and similarly turns them from
architectural limitations into the focus of attention. In the Suspended series, picture frames that traditionally
function as a border to mark the limits of a work of art, lose this function and instead becomes a contorted
and deformed specimen, hung on the wall for appraisal like a caught animal.


About Mehmet Ali Uysal, b. 1976,Turkey. Solo exhibitions include The Past, Pearl Lam Gallery, Shanghai,
China (2014); Pinch Me Awake, Stiftungstarke, Berlin, Germany (2013); Painting, Pi Artworks, Istanbul, Turkey
(2013); Peel at the Nesrin Esirtgen Collection, Istanbul, Turkey (2012); Malist at Q Contemporary, Beirut,
Lebanon (2011); and Mist at Etemad Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2011). Group exhibitions and art fair participation,
includes Art Basel Hong Kong (2013); Eyeballing at the Ankara Contemporary Arts Centre, Turkey (2012);
and Figure Out at Art Saw, Dubai, UAE (2012); as well as Trade Routes at Pi Artworks Istanbul, Turkey
(2011). He has given speaking presentations at events such as Kaleidoscope Europe, Ankara, Lisbon (2009)
and BAUHAUS IMPACT, Ankara, Weimar (2009) as well as the XVIIth International Congress of Aesthetics,
Ankara, Turkey (2007). His work can be found in numerous private and public collections in his native Turkey,
including, Istanbul Modern Collection, Vehbi Koç Foundation Collection, and Ozyegin University Collection.
International collections include Le Vent Des Forets Festival Public Collection, Meuse, France; Chaufontaine
Parks Public Collection, Liege, Belgium; Audi Collection (Audi Bank Lebanon) Beirut, Lebanon;
Golden Harvest Group Art Collection, India; Samdani Art Foundation, Bangladesh and the City of Umea,
Sweden Collection (2014 Culture Capital of Europe), Sweden.



Pi ARTWORKS  London

55 Eastcastle Street London W1W 8EG

Tel:+44 207 637 8403

Pi ARTWORKS Istanbul
İstiklal Cad. Mısır Apt 163/4 Galatasaray
Tel: +90 212 293 71 03