![]() ![]() Ural has all of the qualities of a nonconformist who trailblazes beyond the confines of academic curricula to traverse the reaches of novelty, to found original practices, with an act-first-think-later mentality. He epoxied it messily to a 23 x 23 cm mixed media frame, streaked with a minimalist black-and-blue facade over a single orange line floating above a beige palette, almost reminiscent of the otherworldly schemes of a Rothko.īefore sinking to PİLOT's lowest, subterranean level, Özkara identifies "Cheese head" as the epitome of Ural's solo exhibition, with his knack for drawing out heavy themes in art history and world affairs from lighthearted acts of creative expressionism. ![]() But, to Ural, it is conceivable that the piece of cheese had shed its identity as physical nourishment, instead taking on the spirit of some artistic mode of being that he sought to contextualize. To certain folks, it would have been a complete demoralization, to make art out of his food. Ural cut out the profile formed of the cheese he would have eaten, and in so doing, transgressed his traditional Turkish value system. Ural apparently saw a vision one breakfast over a dairy-rich meal in which a slice of cheese looked back at him with a primitivist air, something akin to the indigenous African sculptural influence in Cubism, a movement Picasso popularized during the interwar period after the scholarship of Carl Einstein, a writer who discovered that his visual ideas had precedent on the Dark Continent. "Cheese head" (2017) stares down gallery visitors till frozen at the head of a staircase winding down into the main exhibition floor below, further beneath the cold, encompassing earth. Beginning with the opening piece by Ural on display at PİLOT, there are theoretical evolutions that the young artist prompts already in his bright, young career, currently an artist-in-residence at Rijksakademie Amsterdam at the promising age of 32, with a multidisciplinary, trans-media background in everything from sculpture to music and solid curatorial experience under his belt. In turn, Ural repeats the painted image of the tiger four times in the show of thirteen works, projecting a sonic effect, as snarling imagined through silent visualization. Interestingly, throughout the show, a lion appears very much like the disproportionately featured wild cat in Rousseau's classic masterwork, which is stunning for the detail of its lush, tropical background, but by a closer look reveals a very curious, apparently unskilled depiction. Truly, it is a stretch to compare Ural to Rousseau in any other way outside of genre concept, as the technical mastery, mystic sweep and crystalline sharpness of such pieces as "The Repast of the Lion" (1907) define the late developments of a legend in his time. Historically, its most famous progenitor is Henri Rousseau, whose lack of education worked in his favor when Picasso saw pure genius in his paintings. He is, in fact, a studied artist confident on the edges of the Naive, a tradition of art that eschews discipline and grasps for the unfocused corners where all sense of training and technique is thrown off. To weary eyes, his art might seem utterly amateurish, frowzy as a neglected stray cat growling in the dust of a forgotten alleyway. In that spirit, the works of Kubilay Mert Ural descend from the Netherlands to his birthplace, for his very first solo show in Istanbul. And then, Daire Sanat left and returned to its apartment venue in Cihangir on Susam Street. PİLOT opened in 2011, starting out in the shorefront quarter of Tophane, sharing the core district cultural scene with important galleries that have since moved, like Rodeo, which relocated to London in 2015, and The Empire Project, led by Kerimcan Güleryüz, son of the notable artist Mehmet Güleryüz, when a hotel bought him out over proximity to Taksim Square. Its spot straddles the subtle zone that spells unbecoming change for nostalgic inhabitants who count the years that have marked the end of an era on one hand. The underground art space, Co-PİLOT, is in a purgatorial state, waiting four years now and running to return to its street-level storefront, PİLOT Gallery, a former night club that would look out over Sıraselvıler Avenue bustling with rims and swagger leading up to Taksim Square in the sleek neighborhood environs of Cihangir, where artists have always made homes, studios and lives out of the air, thick with hints of a long lost heyday.
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