CV

Leylâ Gediz occupies an important place in Turkey for her groundbreaking research on painting as a contemporary practice. Her practice relies on constructing a mode of representation wherein painting and installation are employed as virtually inseparable media, modifying the viewer’s experience of painting as a result. 


Intrigued by the shifts of diasporic beings across the world, Gediz is devoted to expanding the field of painting, its settings, and its audiences. She is an archaeologist of everyday fragments excavating the emotions they emanate. These fragments are played out by random, found, mundane yet useful objects, humans close to her heart, light and shadow humans and objects cast on each other, their – sometimes awkward – volume in space, memories and stories they trigger. They come from different backgrounds, from different moments in time to be masterfully carved out of their literal and metaphorical backgrounds. How they build each other anew in relation within the particular space of still life painting is humble, precise and magical at the same time. They are too real to be unreal, hovering in that fragile zone between fiction and non-fiction. 


Gediz completed her MA in Visual Arts at Goldsmiths College (London, 1999) and a BA in Fine Art (Painting) at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (London, 1998). She had solo exhibitions in Istanbul, Los Angeles, Zurich, Helsinki and Amsterdam. Her work has been widely exhibited and is included in prestigious public and private collections such as Istanbul Modern, Arter (Istanbul), ARCO Foundation (Spain) and Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven).