Bozlu Art Project Mongeri Building is hosting the exhibition ” A Painting of My Face: Artist Ateliers and Self-Portraits from the Dr. Şükrü Bozluolcay Collection” from June 19 to September 2, 2023: “Artist Ateliers”, representing one of the most interesting aspects of the Dr. Şükrü Bozluolcay Collection, is curated by Oğuz Erten while “Artist Self-Portraits”, considered one of the most important topics in the history of art, is curated by Dr. Özlem İnay Erten.
… The workshop is a temple, a mother’s womb, it is the shell of ‘ME’… It’s a very intimate place. A daybed for solitude. A ramp for the bird’s- eye view of the world and life from far above, or for looking into deep wells… (KOMET)
“Artist Ateliers”, a major aspect of Prof. Dr. Şükrü Bozluolcay’s collection, seeks to enable new readings that reflect on the relationship between “artist and atelier” and to offer a new perspective on the idea and logic of collecting in Turkey, with its content covering the materials used by several generations of artists, from Ottoman painters to contemporary artists, such as palettes, brushes, aprons, paint tubes, etc. in their artistic production. The only collection of its kind in Turkey, this collection features the materials used in the studios of many artists, including Şevket Dağ, Fahrelnissa Zeid and Nejad Melih Devrim, Mübin Orhon, Mehmet Güleryüz, Nur Koçak, Komet, Utku Varlık, Neş’e Erdok, Seyhun Topuz and Bedri Baykam.
“Artist Self-Portraits”, one of the most extraordinary and intriguing subjects in the history of art, represents an impressive section of the Dr. Şükrü Bozluolcay Collection: For artists, self-portraits can be seen both as a proof that they are alive & exist and as an introspection, as a reckoning with themselves, as an expression of the desire to leave a kind of “trace” as evidence of how one sees and how one wants to show oneself. The self-portraits in the collection, ranging from Süleyman Seyyid to Nazmi Ziya Güran, Fahrelnissa Zeid to Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Adnan Çoker, Burhan Uygur, Yüksel Arslan and contemporary artists, not only reflect the change in the language of an acclaimed tradition in art history over time, but also reveal the differences in the personal styles of the artists.
The exhibition focuses on the multidimensional conceptual framework of the collected objects, which emerges when they are evaluated as a whole, beyond the meaning they carry on their own, and it aims to offer alternative perspectives to the audience. On view from June 19 to September 2, 2023 at Bozlu Art Project Mongeri Building, “A Painting of My Face: Artist Ateliers and Self-Portraits from the Dr. Şükrü Bozluolcay Collection”, urges us to think about collecting.