Russian streets become art with Ceylan

By Metin Demirsar

ISTANBUL (Dunya) - In the highlycompetitive world of Turkish modern art, where thousands of new artists are trying out to carve out places for their works and designs, Pinar Ceylan represents a fresh ocean breeze with her paintings and collages.

The 28-year-old artist uses bold, bright acrylic colors, mixed art forms, sharp clashing shapes in her art work to jar viewers from their complacency as she transforms the concrete into the abstract.

In her first individual exhibition, on display at Espas Art Gallery (Firin Sokak 4/1, Husrev Gerede Caddesi), in Istanbul's Tesvikiye district through October 2, Miss Ceylan transforms the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, which she visited last year, into abstract works of art.

Titled Ulitsa (Russian for Street), the young artist agitates beholders of her works with her view of the Arbat, a major avenue in Moscow, and Nevsky Prospect in St. Petersburg, and the back streets of the Russian capital. Opposing forces of odd shapes and colors and thick lines and arrows battle it out on her canvasses, amid Cyrillic signs of stores, drinking bars and restaurants that resemble graffiti, as she presents the cacophony of Russian urban life.

"I try to escape from known shapes and forms with my works, "the young artist says in an interview. Miss Ceylan, who is a research assistant at Istanbul's  Yeditepe University, where she received a BFA and MFA in plastic arts, is working on a doctorate at the university in aesthetics and the philosophy of art.

Over the past 11 years, her works have adorned more than 35 group exhibitions in Istanbul and London. She is the youngest of seven offspring of a paper merchant from Nigde province, in central Turkey.