Ayla Turan’s three decades in sculpture |
Welcome back to AL-MONITOR Istanbul.
This week, white takes the lead, from Ayla Turan’s pale, pared-back figures at Is Sanat to the linen tables and daily catch at Eleos Yesilkoy, and even the silver gelatin contrasts of Robert Capa at the Ara Guler Museum. As new exhibitions across the city literally test the surface of things, the fourth year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompts me to pick up an old book about a Crimean woman with Anatolian roots.
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Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)
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1. Leading the week: Ayla Turan’s White Forms
Ayla Turan at work on “Hope” (Courtesy of the artist)
The year at Is Sanat Kibele Art Gallery opens with a 30-year retrospective of sculptor Ayla Turan, bringing together 56 works in marble, bronze, wood and polyester. Born in Hamburg in 1973 and a graduate of Mimar Sinan University’s sculpture department, Turan has built an international practice, with public works installed from Germany to South Korea.
The exhibition gathers pieces from collectors alongside early student works. Turan said she felt as if she were “looking through old albums” while preparing the show, rediscovering sculptures she had not seen in decades. Sorting through nearly 90,000 archive photographs, she encountered works that made her smile — and moments, she noted, when she realized how “freely and courageously” she had once spoken.
Her recent sculptures focus on children, genderless, often anonymous figures rendered in smooth white surfaces. “White is like the essence of everything,” she told Oksijen weekly. “It evokes emptiness, a new beginning, innocence and hope.” The choice is aesthetic, but also conceptual: The neutrality leaves room for viewers to........