NYAB Event - Nuri Bilge Ceylan “The World of My Father”

Nuri Bilge Ceylan “The World of My Father”

Tina Kim Gallery

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Organized to coincide with the New York premiere of Ceylan’s newest film Winter Sleep at The Museum of Modern Art this will be the artist’s first photography exhibition in the United States. The exhibition at Tina Kim Gallery is an historic opportunity to explore how photography remains a foundational aspect of his filmmaking. Co-presented by Dirimart, Istanbul and The American Turkish Society, The World of My Father offers a rare chance to appreciate the incisive eye of a contemporary master simultaneously in multiple mediums.

Having made eight award-winning films over the last decade Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s work is characterized by certain recurring themes, many of which are rooted in his photography. Confronting the complexity of Turkish identity at the crossroads of the Eurasian continent, Ceylan’s work focuses on intimate psychological portraits in stunning detail, capturing the subtle richness of geographical locations and local customs along with postmodern existential themes. Using long takes in his films and unusual vantage points, Ceylan’s films betray a willingness to let stillness and shadow be a central actor. This same commitment to subtle imagery is at work in his photographs that focus intently on the formal interplay between subject and place. In this way the photographs can be seen as studies or meditations forming the basis for his films. But in this same light they stand on their own as even more powerful and distilled compositions that form exquisitely beautiful elegies.

In The World of My Father Ceylan turns his formidable gaze to his father, Mehmet Emin Ceylan, a charismatic subject who played prominent roles in his first three films Clouds of May (1999), The Small Town (1997) Cocoon (1995). Framing universal themes of love and loss, the rich portraits of his father capture his stoic countenance with profound emotion, depicting him as elderly and undeniably vulnerable. Expertly manipulating light as well as choosing complex domestic interiors, the images have been likened to painters like Turner and Breughel the Elder because of their deeply humanistic portrayals and prosaic feel. This comparison to painting is especially apt given Ceylan’s meticulous printing process that lends the works palpable depth.

As a body of work the poignant and honest portrayals begin to feel like fragments of a film that is never ending, thereby completing a symbolic relationship that blurs the line between art and life and that establishes Ceylan as a profoundly important and ethical artist.

A writer and film director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films have received the highest honors at festivals around the world and his most recent film, Winter Sleep was awarded the Palme d’Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. His photography has been shown at the Milli Reasürans Gallery in Istanbul, BFI Southbank, London, and the Médiathèque Michel Crépeau Gallery, La Rochelle, France amongst other places. A book, “Turkey Cinemascope” was published by NTV in December 2009 and another edition of this book with additional panoramic images is soon to be published by Dirimart.