Fifteen artists to follow this season in the Turkish art scene

Hatice Utkan Özden

As Turkish contemporary artists and galleries open to the international art scene, the awareness and knowledge of the country’s art scene has also increased. With the new trends in world contemporary art, Turkey’s art scene has become more famous. The Hürriyet Daily News spoke to 15 prominent names in the Turkish art scene to find out about the rising names in the country

As the season begins in Turkey’s art scene, many new and upcoming artists have entered the frame. While Contemporary Istanbul art fair is approaching, hopes are high and many are waiting to be discovered both as galleries and as artists. Yet, the question remains the same, who are the rising names in the Turkish market?

We spoke to 10 art specialists to discover up-and-coming artists in the Turkish market this season. Rabia Güreli, vice chairperson of Contemporary Istanbul; Yasemin Bay, the editor-in-chief of Istanbul Art News; Kerimcan Güleryüz, owner of The Empire Project; Burcu Öztürkler, an art specialist and business developer; Bengü Gün, director of the Mixer Art Gallery; Aslı Sümer, owner of the Sümer Art Gallery; Mehmet Kahraman, curator and owner of REM art space, Marcus Graf, curator and program director at Contemporary Istanbul; and Amira Akbıyıkoğlu, associate director of Pilot Gallery, gave their thoughts on who to follow.

Alican Leblebici, an artist interested in self-portraits exploring ways to refresh people’s relationship with the form of art, made his debut with the Akbank Contemporary Artists Prize exhibition in 2014. 

Sabo Akdağ’s works focus on reflecting social issues by drawing peculiar figures. In his works, we aren’t surprised to see issues of family values, work environment and social life. 

Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, an artist who loves to question the relationship between identity, memory, space and time, does this by using metaphors from local myths, historic and iconographic elements, and opens a new narrative scope for “the other.”
 
Yuşa Yalçıntaş, meanwhile, is known for his peculiar and mysterious drawings, his mono, expressionless child figures and unrealistic spaces that have reached audiences. While creating something that we are completely unfamiliar with, he offers his own detailed world with a miniaturist approach. 

Another artist, Eren Bayrak mostly uses ready-images and then manipulates graphic and composition values of these images within a new context. Images that change their original meanings reconstruct with different mediums to create new meanings. 

Zeynep Birced is a young artist who seeks to investigate the delicacy of the human condition. According to Birced, everyday existence is always in a predetermined shape, and she looks at ways to deconstruct that form to create new opportunities. 

Bahar Yörükoğlu, an art and design graduate who completed her master’s degree in photography, loves combining photography, video and sculptural elements to alter spaces both indoors and in landscapes. 

Volkan Kızıltunç is a Turkish photographer, video artist and academic. In 2013, he won the ESSL ART AWARD CEE, which is organized by the ESSL Contemporary Art Museum Vienna, with his video work “The Unspectacular.” In 2015, he also won the Akbank Contemporary Artists Prize with his video work “Typology of Memories.” 

Ozan Türkkan is a Paris-based, new media artist who has worked for many years in the field of multimedia and digital art in different countries. Türkkan’s works are centered on experimental media and digital arts with a focus on generative computer art, fractals, algorithmic art and moving images. 

HUO Rf, an Istanbul-based artist, uses a pseudonym for his appearances in exhibitions. He is one of the co-founders of an Istanbul-based artist collective called Signs of Time. 

Sibel Kocakaya is among the artists who defines and rediscovers figure on canvas. Looking through a perspective of a certain figure, Kocayaka explores different mediums in her creation of art such as photography and drawing. 

Rasim Aksan’s works on canvas are created by oil and acrylic paints alongside calligraphy and marbling ink, with the latter applied by airbrush. His works on paper showcase the additional use of pencils and crayons without using oil paint. 

Berkay Buğdanoğlu draws on themes of transience, chaos and the human footprint. Buğdanoğlu’s works incorporate various industrial materials and data analysis techniques with classical painting and sculpture. 

Yusuf Sevinçli has a way of expressing himself via photography. His way of seeing things opens new dimensions in photography while the artist prefers to show the audience a whole new work via his perspective. 

Finally, Özgür Demirci is an artist we watch while he creates videos, performances, objects, and site-specific installations. His work is rooted in socio-cultural codes that capture the human experience and entails gestures and transformations based upon such observations.