Gulay Semercioglu: Variations on Line

Inside, 2011, Wire, screws, wood, 64 x 44 in / 162 x 112 cm

Opening Reception
Thursday, October 18, 6 - 8 pm
568 West 25th Street

Leila Heller is pleased to present Variations on Line, the first solo exhibition in the United States by Turkish artist Gulay Semercloglu, on view at Leila Heller Gallery, located at 568 West 25th Street, from October 11 through November 10, 2012.

Semercloglu forms geometric, 3-dimensional compositions by weaving thin vibrantly colored metal wires on to a wooden plank. More than twenty layers are created from one long piece of metal wire wound around numerous nails. The results are abstract, perhaps even meditative, works inspired by the shapes of microorganisms, simple leaf forms, mountains, and even water. Light and perception play a significant role in Semercioglu’s oeuvre. The aluminum knit works transform visually as light reflects off the work at different points according to the time of the day and the viewing position.

“At first glance the eye is unsure whether it is looking at a textile or industrial object, at handicraft or machine product,” observes journalist Melik Kaylan in his essay from the catalog accompanying Variations on Line. “There is in the work a suggestion simultaneously of Oriental sumptuousness and of futurist design. Indeed, the eye is unsure all around, but it feels ravished by a profound and striking visual utterance that keeps echoing.”

Semercloglu is aware that her work evokes dualities. “I like that [my art] makes contradictions exist and reconcile.” The interplays between East and West, ancient and hi-tech, art and craft, sculptural and painterly, silken and textured are all encouraged and provoked in Semercloglu’s ultra-fine steely tapestries. Works such as Separate Pieces, 2012, Green Apple, 2011, and Golden Circles, 2012, seem at once representational, suggestive of other things—peacocks tails, glossy fans—and yet only of themselves and the integrity of their material. “People like to touch them, as if they were piano or harp strings.” Semercloglu says. “That is as it should be—they are tactile, made by touch. They communicate also on that level.”

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Catalogue

Also on view at Leila Heller Gallery:

Shoja Azari, Room with a View from Windows series, Video Installation

"The idea of making a film, or rather films looking through windows, first came to me when I was watching one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films. I think it was Whitey. There was a long tracking shot moving from one character to the other, while they were seated at two sides of a table, engaged in conversation. In the space between the characters, there was a painting of a landscape. The camera framed this painting on its journey back and forth between the two protagonists. I remember thinking about that painting as a "window" into another world, and that while I, as the viewer, was made aware of it, the painting went completely unnoticed by the characters in Fassbinder’s film. For Fassbinder, this device was a very efficient and effective way to relate to his audience the implicit and indispensable connection between his characters and that of the German landscape. For me, there was a sudden realization of my relationship to the country I have been living in for the last twenty years as an exile. . ."

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Image: Shoja Azari, A Room with a View from Windows (still), 2006, Beta SP, 9 min

Leila Heller Gallery
568 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001
(Tel) 212 249 7695
www.leilahellergallery.com
info@leilahellergallery.com