INTERVIEW: BAHAR YÜRÜKOĞLU

all works © Bahar Yürükoğlu

These days it's really hard to stay positive about Istanbul and its vibrant art scene. Thanks to Istanbul-based artists such as Bahar Yürükoğlu, who was born and grew up in Washington DC, we can take a moment, celebrating the idea for other possible lives. Her current solo show "Flow Through" allows forgetting everything about reality for a while. Despite being located at ARTER, an institute for contemporary art centrally located at Istiklal Street, where an attack just happened a few days ago, the bright pink light shining from the gallery's entrance promises a travelling through time, to a space where there is still hope. This is because Bahar Yürükoğlu literally brings bright lights to our dark times. Her videos, site-specific installations and geometrical landscapes transfer us to completely other corners of the world, such as the Arctic. In our interview, we talked about how she started this journey and where she is heading. 

INTERVIEW: PATRIC SANDRI

all works © Patric Sandri

Patric Sandri is sometimes being asked about the Zurich Concrete Art group, which was founded in the 1930s. With their vivid colours and reduced vocabulary of form, the works of the young Swiss artist, who studied in Lucerne and at the Royal College of Art in London, do indeed evoke associations with Max Bill. Sandri sees himself first of all as a painter, who seeks to break with tradition through examination of objecthood. Here especially the materials that he uses for his works play a major role. If Sandri does not invade the space by layering, his works seem to retain flatness in terms of the media specificity. But because his examination of colour takes place at the edges, the illusion of three-dimensionality does not happen on the surface of the painting but outside its particular body.