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 project their own memory and emotion.

Turan continues to work across materials, resisting any neat narrative of transition. Marble’s resistance, bronze’s weight and polyester’s industrial sheen coexist in the same room. “Each material has its own energy,” she said. What ties the works together is observation: gestures drawn from everyday life, translated into compact forms that address sociology, theology and psychology without abandoning humor.

Where: Buyukdere Cad, Meltem Sk. No: 4 Levent

When: Until May 11

More information here.

2. Word on the street: Eleos Yesilkoy

A seaside tavern in the city (Eleos website) 

From white sculptures to white walls and white linen tableclothes: Eleos Yesilkoy, a few streets from the marina in this old seaside quarter of Istanbul, channels the spirit of an Aegean taverna. The focus is seafood, with daily fish displayed up front, a generous spread of mezze, grilled octopus, tarama and seasonal catches handled with restraint rather than embellishment. The crisp red mullet, served with skin-on potatoes and a simple salad, is a house favorite best enjoyed on the terrace, where Yesilkoy still feels more like a coastal retreat than a metropolis.

Where: Umraniye Mahallesi, Yesilbahce Sokak No. 9, Yesilkoy

3. Istanbul diary

Adam Parker Smith’s “Carolyn1” at Ruzy Gallery (Ruzy Gallery)

“Surface” at Ruzy Gallery, curated by Thom Oosterhof, brings together Adam Parker Smith, Christian Holze, Marton Nemes and Peter Cvik in a tightly argued look at how material, image and value circulate today — from sculptural tension and appropriation to rave-inflected abstraction and analog painting in a screen-saturated age. Until April 23.

Mikis Theodorakis is honored on his 100th birthday with “100 Years Theodorakis: Zorba The Greek” at Zorlu PSM Turkcell Sahnesi on April 3, a large-scale production staged in more than 35 countries that revives the legendary score with a live orchestra and choreography inspired by the film. Tickets here.

These are the last days to see “Champagne Problems” at Dirimart Dolapdere, Emma Stern’s Istanbul debut, where digitally constructed female avatars conceived in 3D software and rendered in oil take over a fantastical dinner party culminating in a three-meter reworking of “The Last Supper.” Until March 1.