Ar(t)chive vol. VII

Su Alara Acerol

Su Alara Acerol is an archaeologist, art historian and a painter. She graduated from Bilkent University Archaeology and History of Art Department with a full scholarship, she later finished her MA at Koç University Department of Archaeology and History of Art (formerly Anatolian Civilizations and Cultural Heritage Management) with a full scholarship as well. She worked in rescue excavations in different parts of the World. In 2015 she entered Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Painting Department for her second BA. In 2019 she graduated as valedictorian and received first place award from Sakıp Sabancı Art Awards. Since then she has joined many group exhibitions and received several art awards. Her paintings and engravings are in numerous private collections as well as in the Cyprus Modern Art Museum’s collection. She opened her first solo exhibition at Istanbul Concept Gallery in October 2020. She is opening her second solo exhibition with Istanbul Concept Gallery in October 2022.

Olga Alexopoulou

b. 1980, Athens. Graduate of the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University. Her works have been exhibited in museums such as the Museum of Spyros Vassiliou, The Ethnological Museum of Trace, and Pinakothiki of Piraeus, as well as in solo exhibitions in galleries in Greece and the UK. In 2017, Alexopoulou was named one of the top 50 female street artists in the world in publications in London and Paris. In recent years, her works have been exhibited on walls, in museums, and in galleries around the world. The artist presents nature to the audience in an endless and untamed way without domesticating art.

Yağızhan Çalışkan

Born in Ankara in 1992, the artist is currently working in Istanbul. After graduating from Ankara Anatolian Fine Arts High School in 2010, he completed his undergraduate education with a full scholarship in Plastic Arts and Painting Department at Yeditepe University, Faculty of Fine Arts. He completed his master's degree at the same university and started his Art Proficiency Doctorate program in the Painting Department at Marmara University in 2019, where he is still continuing his studies. He also works as a research assistant at Yeditepe University.

The young artist examines the relationship between human beings and nature on an existential level. With a multidisciplinary approach, the artist, who works in different production areas, sees human creation as nature's effort to understand itself. In his works, without establishing a relationship between time and space, he questions the sharpness of the artificial-natural distinction of human beings and the dogmatic attitude towards nature that develops from this sharpness.

Hakan Cingöz

Born in 1977, the artist graduated from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of Painting in 2004 and attended the Lithography Workshop at the same university between 2005-2008. In 2008, he completed his master's degree at MSGSU Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Painting. In 2004, he won the first prize in the "İpek-Ahmet Merey Painting Competition" and in 2007 he won the "Nuri İyem Painting Award". 

Since 2009, the artist has participated in many solo and group exhibitions and currently lives and works in Istanbul.

Gökhan Deniz

Born in Istanbul in 1974. She graduated from the Department of Art Education, Faculty of Fine Arts, Marmara University, in 1997.

Following the 1999 Marmara earthquake, the artist took part in active civil society work focusing on human rights violations and children living under risk. She has conducted visual arts workshops in prisons and mental health institutions.

Saygun Dura

Saygun Dura, born in 1964, worked as a photographer and photograph director in an advertising agency in the years between 1989 and 1996. Since then, he has been continuing his career as advertising photographer in his own studio. Dura, who has given seminars on advertising and creative ohotography also has given the lectures called "Advertising Photography, Studio and Light Techniques" in many universities such as Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Department of Graphics, Bahçeşehir University Department of Photography, Doğuş University Department of Graphics, İstanbul Technical University Fine Arts Faculty between 2004 and 2014. He curated the book and exhibition called “Deep Sea Illuminators”, worked in the photo shoots of the project called “Do you know Hasankeyf?”. Also took the underwater photographs of a project which is about producing an underground map of the cistern, well and waterways in Topkapı Palace. Many photographs of him which went on the auction have taken part in special collections and museums. Dura, who provides training for underwater photography, is also a diving trainer and did underwater photo shoots and workshops in many parts of the world. Besides national and international awards, he also held personal exhibitions in İstanbul and New York, participated in many group exhibitions and panels, appeared in selection committees.

Andreas Georgiadis

Andreas Georgiadis was born in 1972 in Thessaloniki. He lives and works in Athens. He studied painting under George Rorris, graphic design at the School of Graphic Arts and Artistic Studies in Athens and illustration in Orleans, France. He has had 13 solo art exhibitions in Greece and overseas and received major distinctions. His works have been acquired by museums, public and private collections, and have illustrated books and records. As a set designer he has helped design the B. and E. Goulandris Foundation as well as many exhibitions at the Gennadius Library, the Museum of Cycladic Art, the Benaki Museum and elsewhere. He also works in theatre as a set and costume designer. He heads the art team of Mikri Arktos publications.

Murat Germen

Born in Ankara, in 1965, Murat Germen is an artist using photography as an expression and research tool. He holds a MArch degree from the Massachusetts Institue of Technology, which he attended as a Fullbright scholar and where he received the AIA Henry Adams Gold Medal for academic excellence. He currently works as a proffesor of art, photography and new media at Sabanci Universty in Istanbul, and has contributed articles and photo series on architecture, photography, art and new media to a wide range of magazines and books.

His exhibiting career includes over eighty shows both in Turkey and throughout the world ( United States, Italy, Germany, UK, Mexico, Portugal, Uzbekistan, Greece, Japan, Russia, Iran, India, France, Canada, Bahrain, Korea, Dubai, China, Sweden, Switzerland and Egypt.) Currently represented by art ON Istanbul, ARTITLEDcontemporary (Netherlands / Belgium) and Rosies Gallery (San Francisco), more than three hundred editions of his artworks are in eminent personal collections, and several in those of Istanbul Modern and Proje4L Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art (Istanbul.)

Işıl Gönen

She was born in 1977, Istanbul. Lives and works in Istanbul. After graduating from Istanbul Anatolian Fine Arts High School Painting Department, she graduated from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Painting Department. 

In her paintings, the artist invites the viewer to a journey between dream and reality, woven with the language of dreamlands, ancient sentences extracted from some wells and labyrinths, and symbols glazed in deserts. In this process, where the deep world of the symbolic is combined with the artist's perception of the mythical realms, the work itself produces the artist simultaneously with the production of the artist's work.

Nihal Gündüz

Lives and works in Istanbul. Graduated from the Photography Department of the Fine Arts Faculty at Mimar Sinan University in 1996. Completed her master's degree in Photography at Marmara University in 1999 and then began working professionally in the fields of advertising and fashion. While continuing to work in advertising and fashion, she also teaches Fashion Photography at Yeditepe University's Faculty of Fine Arts.

Nur Gürel

Nur Gürel completed bachelor`s degree at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of Painting in 2004, and her master`s degree at the same school in 2007.
Nur Gürel deals with all the impositions that turn society into a consumer society and their consequences. The biggest instrument in this regard is manipulation. While in previous works, wallpapers with landscape images used for decoration were used as materials, later photographs, magazines, posters and billboard advertisements were also included in these ready-made visual images. She aims to create tension in her works by using contrasts such as inside-outside, photography-painting, digital print-painting, city-forest, thin-fat. She intervenes in the image , not digitally, but with a particularly primitive sensitivity. In this way, the sterilized advertising language is broken and becomes natural. Topics vary depending on what is intended to be manipulated

Gülercan Hacıoğlu

1960, Bulgaristan doğumlu. 1989 yılında Sofya Ulusal Sanat Akademisinden mezun oldu. 1995-1997 yılları arasında Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi Resim Bölümü’nde yüksek lisansını tamamladı.

Serra Kuşkaya

Serra Kuskaya was born in Istanbul in 1992. After graduating from Istanbul Avni Akyol Anatolian Fİne Arts High School Painting Department, she continued her education at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts Universty Painting Department, and after spending a period of her education at Complutense Universty of Madrid by participating in the Erasmus programme, she complated her undergraduate education in 2015.

She contiues her works in her studio in Fethiye.

In her productions, the artist confronts the nature that has been destroyed by human beings as a result of the destructions created by human beings reflections of inadequacy and helplessness in the effort to adapt. With human waste and artefacts that will take thousands of years to disappear, the ephemerality of our existence and scenes that tell us about the permanence of our traces.

Çeyiz Makal Fairclough

Çeyiz Makal Fairclough is a multidisciplinary artist, academic, and researcher working in the fields of photography, psychogeography, and visual sociology. Having lived in Turkey, the UK, Yemen, and Poland, her artistic and academic productions have been shaped by these multicultural experiences. She completed her photography training at the Warsaw School of Photography in Poland, in the studio of Marian Schmidt; and later pursued a practice-based PhD in Media and Art at the University of Salford. Her doctoral research employed an interdisciplinary approach to explore the experiences of Turkish migrants living in the UK through social documentary photography and visual sociology. Her artistic work focuses on themes such as migration, identity, representation, and spatial experience. Adopting a psychogeographic perspective, Fairclough investigates individual and collective relationships with space. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She is currently a faculty member at the Faculty of Art and Design at Beykoz University, where she teaches courses on visual culture, documentary photography, and research-based artistic production.

Mustafa Orkun Müftüoğlu

He was born in 1973 in the town of Of, Trabzon.
He graduated from the Painting Department of Mimar Sinan University Faculty of Fine Arts in 1995.
He has received twelve national art awards and has held five solo exhibitions to date.
He currently works as a faculty member in the Painting Department at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Faculty of Fine Arts

Elena Papadimitriou

She studied at the Faculty of Applied Arts between 1989-1990. Between 1991-1996 Professor P. Tetsis and Professor Ch. She took lessons from Mpotsoglou. Between 1993-1994, St. She completed her education at Carles Fine Arts University.

Tayfun Pirselimoğlu

Born in Trabzon. Pirselimoğlu graduated from Middle East Technical University after which he went to Vienna and enrolled at Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst where he studied under Professor Wolfgang Hutter, one of the most important names in the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. He also studied engraving under Professor Sigi Schenk.

Pirselimoğlu held various solo and joint exhibitions in Turkey and abroad. His drawings have been published in a number of magazines. He is one of the founders of the independent art initiative ‘Akademie Genius’ where he has conducted workshops and given classes.

Pirselimoğlu wrote and directed the films ‘Innowhereland’, ‘Rıza’, ‘Haze’, ‘Hair’, ‘I’m not Him’, ‘Sideway’ and ‘Kerr’. He was also nominated for an Oscar for the movie 'Kerr'. He is the author of seven novels (‘Tales from the Desert’, ‘The Album of the Lost People’, ‘Melancholy’, ‘Towers of the City’, ‘Kerr’, ‘Barber’, ‘Surveyor’) and three story books (‘Hotel Rooms’, ‘The Newest Lives of Harry Lime or Praise to the Third Man’, ‘The Other Side of the Desert’)

Gabrielle Reeves

Gabrielle Reeves is a multidisciplinary visual artist from Casper, Wyoming. Her work has been showcased in solo exhibitions at The Brinton Museum in Big Horn, Wyoming, The Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper, Wyoming, The Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, South Dakota, Zaratan Contemporary in Lisbon, Portugal, and Istanbul Concept Gallery in Istanbul, Turkey. Additionally, her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including “Kaybolan Suretler / Lost Forms” at Istanbul Concept Gallery, “The Brinton 101” at The Brinton Museum, “Le Printemps des Artistes” at Sainte Pulchérie Fransız Lisesi in Istanbul, Turkey.
Gabrielle’s art is held in several permanent collections, including the Nicolaysen Art Museum, The Guray Museum in Cappadocia, and the University of Wyoming Campus in Laramie, WY. She has been a freelance artist and art instructor in Istanbul, Turkey, since 2014.

Maria Roza

Born in Baku in 1998, lives and works in Ankara. After graduating from the Fine Arts High School of Ankara, she studied at Hacettepe University Painting Department and graduated with a degree. Recently, she completed her Master of Fine Arts at the same university. 
The young artist focuses in her works on the relationship humankind has with animals and with primitivity, and on the structural and functional features of these relations. What she aims for is to make her audience feel the uncanny atmosphere in her works and still provide them with a safe harbour by nesting them in the pleasing harmony and aesthetics of the paintings.

Doug Russell

Working within the tradition of architectural capriccio, Doug Russell constructs imagined realities shaped by his fascination with architectural forms and organic structures. His drawings and layered works bring together ruins, landscapes, and suburban houses, exploring the cycles of human construction, decay, and transformation. Inspired by years of living and traveling in places such as Turkey, Cambodia, Bali, and Indonesia, Russell combines fragments of history and memory into improvised narratives where human intention meets nature’s resilience.

Yonca Saraçoğlu

Born in Ankara. Graduated from Saint-Benoit French High School, Istanbul. After graduating from State Academy of Fine Arts, Sculpture Department settled in Paris in 1988. Studied at Sorbonne French Language and Civilization Department. Began to study painting, made vocational made ​​trips to various European countries. Returned to Turkey in May 1991. After a happy period of intensive photographing discovered Istanbul and decided to create her own artistic universe. Works in her own studio in Cihangir, Istanbul. Saraçoğlu sees art as an inner transformer, a way of loving life and beings, and a state of resistance. 

Eda Tekcan

Eda Tekcan was born in Istanbul in 1973. She studied at Galatasaray High School between 1986-93. Between 1991-93, She studied drawing at the Memet Güreli Studio. Between 1993 and 1997, she completed her undergraduate education in the Graphic Design Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University, graduating in 1997 as first in her department and faculty, and second in the university. During 1999-2001, while continuing her Master's Education in the Graphic Design Department of Mimar Sinan University Faculty of Fine Arts, she worked as a Research Assistant in the same department. In 2001, she commenced her Ph.D. in Fine Arts while working for two years as the Visual Director of Akademist magazine. In 2001, she was recognized with the Bikem Özsunay Foundation Special Award for the logo and banner work she submitted in the Grafist 5 competition in the scope of the 21st Graphic Products Exhibition organized by the Professional Association of Graphic Artists. She served as a Founding Board Member for IMOGA the Istanbul Museum of Graphic Arts, which opened in October 2004, and as a Founding Board Member of the Istanbul Ex-libris Museum in 2008. She worked on printmaking at The Çamlıca House of Art in Çamlıca in 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2003 and at IMOGA in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2016. Since 2009, she has taught printmaking at Işık University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Graphic Arts and Graphic Design Department, and Graphic Design and Portfolio Design at Istanbul Commerce University’s Faculty of Communication, Department of Visual Communication Design. She completed her Ph.D. at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University’s Graphic Design Department with her thesis entitled "Ex-libris and Its Function as a Communication Tool". She is the founder and manager of IMOGA Art Space, which was established in 2015.

Ümit Ünal

b. 1965, İzmir, TR. Graduated from the Department of Cinema and TV at the Faculty of Fine Arts at 9 Eylül University. The short films he directed before graduation received various awards. Starting from 1999, the artist began working in the cinema-TV industry and continues to do so today.

Ünal is the screenwriter of eight films, including "My Aunt", "My Dreams, My Love, and You". He wrote and directed eight films, including "9", which won numerous awards and was selected as Turkey's nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2003. He also wrote and directed "Anlat Istanbul", "Ara", "Gölgesizler", "Ses", "Nar", and "Sofra Sırları". He has published five books, including a collection of short stories, three novels, and an autobiography.

The versatile artist later demonstrated his talent for painting and participated in many personal and group exhibitions.