Ebru Uygun’s work can be seen as a semaphore for the deconstruction of traditional artistic practice. Her work, while displaying many of the aspects of traditional paintings —created with paint, hung on walls, existing in two dimensions— also encompasses various practices including performance, collage, sound-making and sculpture. In her works, Uygun effortlessly combines several binaries: deconstruction and reconstruction; pulling apart and putting back together; silence and noise; chaos and order.
The artist’s practice began with the impulse to add and then later tear off strips of her paintings, the latter practice being physically arduous and leaving “scars“ on the canvas. Uygun then began to work with scissors to eviscerate her canvases before compiling the pieces back into a whole. These earlier attempts were fundamental inquiries that helped evolve her practice to where she is today.
Where in the past Uygun worked with the painting as a discrete element, today she works with four sheets of canvas, which are painted and then deconstructed by hand. The process begins with the artist tearing the painted material into strips and pasting the torn and painted strips to a traditional canvas support. Uygun also archives the sound of this performance, recording all of the disparate aural activity in the studio, from the tearing of canvas to the heavy breathing of her toil.
This process is integral to Ebru’s artistic practice. As a result colour becomes the vocabulary of the work and the work itself becomes three dimensional. Its surface, with overlapped strips and strands of glue and shreds of linen hanging from it, becomes a textural object, more akin to assemblage or collage, which is then treated with a varnish. Uygun’s canvases are thus clearly articulated through an uncontrolled system. She releases any artistic responsibility and allows the materials and the process to dictate the work.
Notes to Editors
Born in Turkey in 1974, Ebru Uygun studied Fine Art at Marmara University in Istanbul before continuing at Kingston University and Brighton University in England respectively. Ebru’s recent shows include “Time For A Dream” at Dirimart, Istanbul, “Istanbul Cool: Turkish Contemporary Art at Close Proximity” at LTMH Gallery, New York and a group show at Marlborough Gallery, New York in 2009. Her work was shown in several art fairs internationally including the Armory Show NY (2010), Art Dubai (2009, 2010) and Art Athina (2009). She lives and works in Istanbul.
About Green Art Gallery
Green Art Gallery was founded in 1995 and was amongst the first galleries to exhibit Arab art in Dubai. The Gallery became a primary establishment to nurture the city's earliest art collector base by promoting pioneering artists from across the Middle East and North Africa. In 2008, leveraging its long and rich history in the market, Green Art Gallery also began to represent and showcase contemporary artists from the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. In this manner the Gallery would become one of the few spaces whose knowledge and expertise has spanned the Arab art movement from modernism and will continue to promote the newest tendencies in the regional contemporary art practices.
Green Art Gallery aims to become not only an exhibition space, but also as a supporter and point of reference for the regional trends in modern and contemporary art practices.
In December 2010, Green Art Gallery moved to its new 3,000 s.q.f space in Al Serkal Avenue in al Quoz, the new up-and-coming art district in Dubai. The new space reflects the Gallery’s commitment to its artists and its focus on curatorial programming from the region.
