24/11/2011
Leyla Gediz
Rampa, Istanbul
Coming Soon. The exhibition include the artist's recent paintings, shaped between the pressure to consume as imposed by the celebration of culture, they bear traces of the personal transformation in which Gediz herself undergoes a generational rupture.
Rampa will host Leyla Gediz's solo exhibition Coming Soon between November 24, 2011 and January 7, 2012. Coming Soon will bring together Gediz's new works that have not been exhibited before.
Coming Soon will include the artist's recent works—mostly designed as series—drawing from an experimentalist production process. Tackling psychological, social and developmental questions instigated by processes of attachment and remembering with a conceptual approach, the artist constructs the exhibition over the impossible representation of happy family life. These recent paintings, shaped between the pressure to consume as imposed by the celebration of culture and the future anxiety inherent in the social construct of family, bear traces of the personal transformation in which Gediz herself undergoes a generational rupture.
Leyla Gediz, who for the first time is producing a painting series within such a conceptual coherence and focusing on variation technique, is constructing parallel stories with different pictorial values stemming from the nature of abstraction. The series "Coming Soon", an abstract depiction of firework shows blasting through the sky over Istanbul during weddings and concerts, references the physicality of celebration and—as the feeling it leaves in memory—the ephemeral aspect of the spectacle. The "A Darkling Garden" series, in which she turns the time she spends with her family into a study, emerged during time spent in a garden where the light is constantly changing. These paintings feature the uncanny corners of the garden, trees and leaves that symbolize the unspoken, hidden, repressed secrets of shared lives with the balance of darkness and light.
Gediz, who also questions her own social map in the preparatory process of the Coming Soon exhibition, uses the white lies of everyday communication, other commitments presented as obstacles to meetings and future promises as typographic images in her drawings titled "We Almost Met". Devising a performative working ground for another one of her series, the artist makes portraits of friends she sees only occasionally. Renowned for her contemporary approach to the tradition of the portrait from her earlier work such as "Atlantis 2000" (2001) or "Portre/Portrait" (2002), this time Gediz situates the reflexive relationship between herself and the young women she positions as models as the initial phase of an open ended research process. In accordance with the nature of working with a model, the project derives from the organic and reciprocal relationship between the artist's subject and the content subject, shaping each other in the process.
Among the paintings outside the series, in line with the artist's autobiographical approach, "No me mientas" (in Spanish; don't lie to me) which has a dolphin bath toy at its center and "Paraphernalia" (in Latin, personal belongings of a person, especially a woman) which depicts a white flower figure composed of fish scales, are the most recent products of the artist's obsessive relationship with objects.
Leyla Gediz's exhibition, Coming Soon, which the artist is producing in response to her own generation's haste and fluster to build a future and be adults, corresponds to more than the sum of its story's parts; to common denominators that connect us to each other and define our relationship with life—in her words, the artist is asking—"What does the future promise us today?"
Born in 1974, Leyla Gediz grew up in İstanbul. She moved to the UK to study art where she first took a foundation course at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. She then went on to study at the Slade School of Fine Arts, finally receiving her MA in Visual Arts from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Gediz is renowned for her narrative paintings and installations, inspired by her memories and experiences about growing up and living in İstanbul. Her first solo exhibition opened in İstanbul in 2002 followed by other various solo exhibitions in İstanbul and abroad such as Roberts & Tilton Gallery in L.A. and Fabian & Claude Walter Galerie in Zurich. Gediz also participated in national and international exhibitions such as the “Egofugal”, 7th İstanbul Biennial, İstanbul (2001); “Where? / Here?, Turkish Art Today”, The Museum of Modern Art Saitama, Saitama (2003); “Art For…”, Garanti Platform Contemporary Art Centre, İstanbul (2005); “Eindhoven – İstanbul”, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2005); “Urban Reality: Focus İstanbul”, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2005); ”Save As”, Triennale Bovisa, Milan (2008); “Last Things”, Westfaelischer Kunstverein, Münster (2008). She was also the curator of several exhibitions in İstanbul between 2008 and 2009 and attended the HIAP Helsinki artist-in-residence program in 2010.
Leyla Gediz lives and works in İstanbul.
Image: Death of an Acrobat, 2009. Oil on canvas 170 x 126 cm
Press contact:
Mr. Üstüngel İnanç T +90 212 3270800 uinanc@rampaistanbul.com
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