Comb, 2015, hand-woven wire,
wood, 50 x 62 cm
GÜLAY SEMERCİOĞLU
The Woman On The Wire
9 October/Ekim - 21
November/Kasım 2015
Private View
Thrusday 8 October 2015
18:30 - 21:00
Panel Discussion
Thursday, November19, 2015 19:00
Chaired by
Jareh Das
press release
Pi Artworks London is
pleased to announce Gülay Semercioğlu’s solo exhibition at the gallery.
Semercioğlu has been working
with Pi Artworks since 2005, and her work has recently been acquired
by the Metropolitan Museum,
New York and Istanbul Modern, Istanbul.
Semercioğlu carefully loops
by hand thin, coloured, enamel coated, wire to create knitted structures. By
densely
overlapping these fine
wires, the surfaces appear from a distance like shimmering, glossy blocks of
smooth colour,
while up close the viewer witnesses
fluctuating tonal modulations as light is reflected from one strand to the
next.
In the past her work has
drawn parallels with abstract and colour field paintings, but for The Woman On
The Wire
she seeks to emphasize more
than just the formal qualities of her process.
Within this body of work the artist
investigates authority and
control, with particular attention to the curtailing of agency and free-will
women
are subjected to within
Turkey’s persistently patriarchal society. A subject matter that was central to
her practice
up until 2005, which she now
feels ready to re-approach through the prism of her well known recent
aesthetic.
For her new work,
Semercioğlu has worked with women from across Turkey, in collaboration with
whom she has
produced in her signature
style items familiar to domestic spaces. A bed stands at the far end of the
gallery,
a free flowing garment hangs
from the ceiling, and the walls are decorated with framed pictures.
By working almost
exclusively with gold plated filament – a colour closely associated with
weddings in Turkish culture
– she alludes to this being
the surreal marital home of an imagined young woman.
This scene, however, is
critically deconstructs by taking the reoccurring motifs that are indicative of
a patriarchal society
that are embedded within
such domestic spaces and bringing them to the fore. Motifs that signify
processes such as
marriage, birth, and the
feeling of pride after giving birth to a baby boy regularly feature within
traditional Anatolian craftwork
that fill many homes but are
too subtle and ubiquitous to be noticed. Yet these motifs epitomize patriarchal
soft power
by subtly defining two
separate paths that a man and a woman are to progress down. By introducing
these references
Semercioğlu reveals how even
private domestic spaces are not free from the understanding of the male as the
authoritative
figure whose role is
separate from that of a woman’s. This is further emphasized by the artist’s
mimicry of the aesthetic
of Capitones; rectangular,
fabric panels consisting of rows of indented buttons placed behind the desks of
state bureaucrats
that signify, typically
male, authority.
Gülay Semercioğlu's (b.
1968) work can be found in numerous public collections, including
the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, NY, USA;
Istanbul Modern, Istanbul,
Turkey; Farhad Farjam Collection, Dubai, UAE;
Cocca Art & Design
Institute, Coimbatore, India; the collection of the Centene Center for Arts and
Education, MO, USA;
the Papko Art Collection,
Istanbul, Turkey.
Recent solo exhibitions
include, Walking On The Wire at Pi Artworks Istanbul (2014),
Variations On Line at Leila
Heller Gallery, New York (2012), and The Line Of Life at Gallery Etemad, Dubai
(2012).
Group exhibitions include
Sublime Porte: An Exhibition
of Contemporary Turkish Art at the Dr. MT Geoffrey Yeh Art Gallery in New York
(2013);
Dream and Reality - Modern
And Contemporary Women Artists From Turkey, Istanbul Modern (2011);
Abbara Kadabra, Mardin
Biennial (2010) and Istanbul Next Wave, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin (2009).
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