Jan 9, 2024 - Jan 30, 2024

In The End, There Is No End

Coşkun Sami

Istanbul Concept Gallery is pleased to announce “In The End, There Is No End”, the sixth solo exhibition of Coşkun Sami.

“In The End, There Is No End” title draws inspiration from the critically acclaimed, multi-dimensional album by the Canadian instrumental band “New Age Doom,” hailed as ‘sophisticated, dramatic, and emotionally layered’ by Pitchfork. Similarly, Coşkun Sami endeavors to present both existing and new themes intriguing him in a non-linear tapestry of styles and formal approaches.

Despite its poetic title, “In The End, There Is No End” is more concerned with the artist’s journey than grand conclusions—namely, the journey through time, space, and layers of constructed meanings. Recent and new paintings and drawings form an ambivalent and multifaceted body of works, reflecting an attempt at a mapping effort of an age standing at the cusp of radical transformation. Defying the modernist impulse to simplify and order or the conceptual reflex to reveal hidden connections, the stories brought to light by Sami are bifurcated and open-ended.

This approach is perhaps best exemplified in his drawings—personal, dark, dense works of ink on paper that blend figures and spaces, hatchings and marks, opacity and obscurity on the same surface. While they may initially seem like incongruities, upon closer consideration, these drawings contribute a ‘dark matter’ to the references swirling around his imaginary, constructed landscapes.

In his paintings, fluency and deceptive ease are contradicted by a gripping need to rehearse expressionistic gestures, a comprehensible approach given his upbringing shaped by the formalist, rigid, narrative features of the late socialist realism school. While the artist is attentive to the history of his medium and employs juxtaposition and ‘rückenfigur’ methods spearheaded by artists like Magritte and Caspar David-Friedrich, his themes are akin to secrets lurking in a dark forest—a metaphor for a potentially dark future, yet one that should be embraced without reservations. For if we set aside our personal agencies, we will discern in the fog which surrounds us that every collapse is also a new beginning, each decay signals the emergence of new forms, and, in the end, there is no end.

“In The End, There Is No End” can be visited between January 9-30, 2024 at Istanbul Concept Gallery, Tomtom Mah. Nur-u Ziya Sk. No:27, Beyoğlu, İstanbul.