VISUAL ARTIST

Evren Tekinoktay

Evren Tekinoktay´s work is originated in collage. She uses found imagery and familiar visual tropes to explore the body and its desire as a currency that can be consumed, reproduced and exchanged in the form of images.  

Across her work in a variety media, a retro sensibility of feminine craft, the domestic or decorative, meets a knowing feminist undertone. The artist’s kinetic sculptures of spinning shapes and colorful neon lights, low-tech video animations of magazine cut-outs, and satin quilts mounted on porthole mirrors share the same handmade aesthetic. Her paper collages and paintings are disarming images that mix naive child-like markings with a gritty sophistication: ranging from erotic to cartoonish, folksy and glam.

A nostalgic mood of camp theatricality recurs in the work: be it a cowboy boot painted in an op art pattern, the ‘moving collages’ reminiscent of fairground rides or flashing advertisements, or the images of wigged women in drag from 80s magazines that appear in the artist’s films. This language of words, patterns and symbolic imagery so rich in texture and stimulus, speaks also of the melancholy tristesse that overcomes the theatre when the lights go out after the show. 

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

VINTERMUSIK-Collaborations (Copenhagen), LOTUS-Pilevneli Gallery (Istanbul,)
SERPENTINE-The Approach (London), IF 6 WAS 9-Collaborations (Copenhagen)
SOMEDAY A REAL RAIN WILL COME AND WASH ALL THE SCUM OFF THE STREETS- Nordic Contemporary(Paris)
NEON- THE CHARGED LINE -Grundy Art Gallery (Blackpool- UK), BERMUDA -David Risley Gallery (Copenhagen),
BACKGROUND/FOREGROUND-Galerie Nordenhake(Stockholm) , ULALUME-The Approach Gallery (London,)  MOON SKIN LUCID WALK-Den Frie (Copenhagen),  PURPLE HEAD- Galerist (Istanbul) U- Imo projects (Copenhagen), SUCK-Galerist (Istanbul), A SLIGHTLY PREGNANT MAN- The Approach Gallery( London), ROOMING IN- Patricia Low Gallery (Gstaad) , THE TRIUMPH OF PAINTING, Saatchi Gallery ( London), NATION-Frankfurter Kunstverrein (Frankfurt), THERE ONCE WAS A WOMAN WHO PUT HER HEAD INTO AN OVEN, Galerie Zwinger (Berlin).

BORN

1972, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Lives and works in Copenhagen. 

GRADUATED

Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, Holland (BA) (1993-1997),
Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, Holland(MA) (1997-1999)
The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark (1998-1999)