NYAB Event - Gulay Semercioglu "Variations on Line"

Gulay Semercioglu "Variations on Line"

Leila Heller Gallery (Chelsea)

This event has ended.

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.”