Utku Dervent & İlker Yardımcı / Being There

Bozlu Art Project is welcoming 2015 with a selection of paintings and sculptures by Utku Dervent and İlker Yardımcı. In reference to the famous novel by Jerzy Kosiński, the exhibition is entitled "Being There" and draws from the stylistic similarities in the works of Utku Dervent and İlker Yardımcı, giving reference to concepts such as being in the same garden, timelessness, the perception and ascription of meaning to reality, underlining the harmony and discord between different disciplines in art.

Starting out from the assumption that the message in communication between people belongs also to the recipient, the exhibition emphasises that every work that leaves the artist's workshop gains new points of view and new meanings with each observer and questions radical perspectives that the world of images, a meeting of undefined space and time, can be percieved through a bird's eye view.

Defining his works on the relations of form and space as well as colour and light for many years, Utku Dervent questions abstract geometric constructions and the probability of basic phenomena such as unity, harmony and balance, emphasising that for the artist, the most defining and attractive part of this game of probability is the conditions of similarity, proportion and ratios brought by figurative construction and decreasing the associations formed by objects that are familiar to the viewer.

Aiming to create a communicative perception of sculpture using the interactions and overlap between basic forms, without words, through sensation, İlker Yardımcı creates a dynamic category within the static universe of sculpture as a form, through association and mental acceleration.

The conceptual similarity between Utku Dervent and İlker Yardımcı's works, starting out in the abstract geometric forms, give reference to the "garden" concept used by Kosiński as a metaphor for the place one wishes to be, and aim to establish sensory communication with the extrapolation of memory of the viewer, standing in the same garden.

İlker Yardımcı was born in Konya in 1974 and graduated from the Department of Sculpture at the Dokuz Eylül University, Faculty of Fine Arts. The artist's works have featured the question of metal materials in sculpture as a medium and the metal sculpture entitled "the Anxiety of the Prism" was selected among 26 other international project to be exhibited in the scope of the Beijing Urban Sculpture Contest as part of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  Aiming to create a communicative perception of sculpture using the interactions and overlap between basic forms, without words, through sensation, İlker Yardımcı creates a dynamic category within the static universe of sculpture as a form, through association and mental acceleration. The artist's works feature in a number of public and private collections. Having participated in many exhibitions, fairs and bienales, most recently the artist recieved the second place prize for his sculpture entitled "Lyric Message" at the International EXPO Sculpture Park Contest in Qingdao, China in 2014 and his work "A-Lone" was awarded with fourth place at the International Sculpture Bienale in Chaco, Argentina, held between the 12th and 30th July 2014. İlker Yardımcı is the Sculpture Department Head at the Faculty of Art and Design at Düzce University and teaches as an assistant professor.