Nov 12, 2026 - Dec 12, 2026

There Is Still a Possibility

Hüseyin Rüstemoğlu

Hüseyin Rüstemoğlu’s solo exhibition There Is Still a Possibility, opening at Istanbul Concept Gallery on 12 November, questions the privileged position humans claim over nature. Bringing humans, birds, animals and plants onto the same pictorial plane, Rüstemoğlu describes the exhibition’s perspective in a single sentence: “Here, the human does not look at nature; the gaze comes from within nature.” The exhibition revisits Istanbul Concept’s principle that “No life is superior to another” through the relationship between humans and other forms of life.

Born in Bursa in 1981, Rüstemoğlu spent his childhood in his family’s detached home in the forest. His connection with nature continues to this day. Drawing on this personal experience, the Nature Series questions the idea that humans exist apart from, and above, nature.

Rüstemoğlu’s earlier work focused on the human body, loneliness, alienation and belonging. In the Nature Series, the inquiry extends to the human relationship with other living beings: the human body becomes part of the same composition as plants, birds and animals.

In one painting, a nude figure lies beneath flowering branches; in another, a child sits on a tree branch beside a bird. Owls and other birds appear among the branches, while rabbits inhabit their own environments. At times, the human figures appear smaller in relation to plants and animals. Freed from the markers of social status and class carried by clothing, the nude bodies are presented as beings within nature. The open spaces in the paintings do not describe a specific geography; they show the place humans and other living beings occupy within nature.

The exhibition includes paintings made with acrylic paint and acrylic marker on canvas, as well as works combining drawing and paint on raw fabric; some also incorporate embroidery. Layers of line and varied surfaces carry the figures’ relationships with their surroundings into the form of the paintings.

The claim of human dominion over other living beings has often appeared in art history through hunting scenes and still lifes presenting hunted animals as trophies. In Wybrand Hendriks’s 1784 watercolor Hunting Still Life in a Forest, a rifle and hunted animals are arranged as trophies within a forest landscape. In Rüstemoğlu’s paintings, by contrast, birds, animals and humans share a common living space. This proximity suspends the hierarchy between humans and other living beings, bringing the exhibition’s central question into view through the paintings themselves.

In September, Istanbul Concept brought the idea of solidarity to the fore with “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” This time, the exhibition extends solidarity to the relationship humans form with other living beings. The institution’s principle that “No life is superior to another” finds expression in the way humans, birds, animals and trees share the same world in Rüstemoğlu’s paintings.

There Is Still a Possibility invites us to consider the human being within a shared life with nature and other living beings. The exhibition leaves visitors with a question: “Is there really still another possibility?”