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
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