Serkan Özkaya

Serkan Özkaya (born 1973) is a Turkish and American conceptual artist whose work deals with topics of appropriation and reproduction. He typically operates outside of traditional art spaces and often makes multiple versions of even his own work, including his most noted work David (inspired by Michelangelo). Özkaya's artworks are held in the permanent collections of the İstanbul Modern, Borusan Contemporary Art, and Arter in Istanbul, as well as three different 21c Museum Hotels locations—Louisville, Kentucky; Bentonville, Arkansas; and Nashville, Tennessee.

Early life and education Özkaya grew up in Istanbul, Turkey. At a young age, he began learning about Western art through the study of reproductions of major artworks found in books. It is here his interests in the concepts originality, replication and emulation began. He attended Istanbul University, graduating with both a bachelor and a master's degree in arts. He continued his graduate studies at Bard College. and a letter to the German Bundestag that they permit him to re-wrap the Reichstag. Often, the letters do not deserve a response but curiously, they have usually been treated with official but unthinking courtesy, read perhaps but not comprehended—answered and then often passed along the bureaucratic chain. In 2009, Dear Sir or Madam was exhibited at the Slag Gallery in New York along with works from the same period. Among them was Proletarier Aller Laender (1998-2009) or Proletariat of all Countries, as it is also known in English, a collection of red plastic foam figurines glued to the floor. In viewing this work, the audience is most likely forced to trample on the little figures Other works in the exhibition included the golden sculptures Levitation by Defecation (2008), Shit on a Stick (2008), and Goldenboy (2006), "a fiberglass figure painted in gold acrylic and dangling a couple of feet off the ground by a noose".

In 2003, Özkaya turned the front and back covers of the Turkish language newspaper, Radikal into drawings. In similar fashion, in subsequent years, some pages of several other newspapers were also hand-rendered and appeared as a print of the drawings. The overall piece, entitled Today Could Be A Day Of Historical Importance was executed in Sweden with Aftonbladet, in Germany with Freitag, and in the US with The New York Times and The Courier-Journal. The last of which was created in collaboration with the non-profit artwithoutwalls. The New York Times version in the "Weekend Arts" section appeared mise en abyme with Özkaya's drawing appearing as an inset in the page and an even smaller drawing appearing as an inset of that, and so on, creating a Droste effect. Unfortunately, the statue crashed and was destroyed while in the process of being installed at Şişli Square. Özkaya created two new versions of the replica at a studio in Eskişehir, one of which was to be placed in the local Sazova Science, Art and Culture Park. The other was acquired by 21c Museum Hotels in Louisville, Kentucky. On its way to Louisville, the piece made a stop in New York City. Although just a mere copy, the statue made quite a spectacle, as the artist intended, attracting the attention of tourists and residents as it was transported uncovered lying horizontally on a semi-trailer truck. The giant 30-foot statue is currently featured in front of the museum hotel on West Main Street in Louisville.

In A Sudden Gust of Wind (2007 –2013), Özkaya depicted the journey of a stack of papers blown away by the wind. The original work was made with basic materials: standard A4 paper, thread, and glue. The piece was inspired by Ejiri in Suruga Province (A Sudden Gust of Wind), a 19th-century Japanese woodcut by Hokusai, and A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) (1993) by Jeff Wall. One version of the installation was first exhibited at the Boots Contemporary Art Space in St. Louis, Missouri. Bring me the head of... at Freemans' Restaurant as part of Performa07 Bring me the head of… (2007–2015) is the edible form of a teddy bear's head on a plate. Instead of working with museums or galleries, in this series, Özkaya collaborated with restaurants and chefs and they decided the ingredients—that is the material of the sculpture. This work was made in collaboration with M on the Bund in Shanghai, offered at Freemans' Restaurant in New York in 2007 as a part of the Performa Biennial, at Changa in Istanbul in 2008, as street food in İzmir in 2009, at Capital M in Beijing in 2012, and at the Hive in Bentonville, Arkansas in 2014.

In One and Three Pasta (2012), Özkaya collaborated with the architect George L. Legendre, a professor at Harvard University. Using Legendreʼs mathematical equations (published in Pasta By Design and reviewed in the New Scientist ), they created a series of computer-generated replicas of 92 types of pasta and 3D-printed them in nylon. The actual pieces of pasta were displayed next to their ideal nylon replicas, along with the generative equations of each shape. One and Three Pasta references to canonical works like Joseph Kosuthʼs One and Three Chairs and Donald Juddʼs Untitled stacks.

An Attempt at Exhausting A Place… is a series of works in which the artist "dissolves the white cube" and the usual constraints of a traditional art space. Four projectors are used to display a live feed of the scene beyond the wall on which they are projected. The work was exhibited as part of Özkaya's solo exhibition at the Postmasters Gallery in New York, running from May 14 to June 18, 2016. A version of the work is also presented in a permanent exhibition at the lobby of the 21c Museum Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee.

Other notable works Atlas (2011) is a contribution to a walking museum wherein Özkaya constructed a rock to be strapped to the curator's back and promenaded daily throughout the streets of New York. The idea was to make "the museum" itself wander around the streets of the city with Özkaya's new piece, a giant rock.

Mirage (2013) was installed at the Postmasters Gallery in New York and consisted of a shadow of a passenger airplane that crossed the room for 45 seconds every four minutes. The shadow here was considered not as the mere absence of light, but rather as a material in and of itself which could then be sculpted. The work was also exhibited as part of the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection's Overture: New Acquisitions (2015) at Perili Köşk in Istanbul.

MyMoon (2015 – present) is another artwork by Özkaya, a large round rock floating in the sky, that is visible only through a smartphone via the MyMoon app. Using the phone's GPS and compass, MyMoon app detects the object in the sky and makes it visible. MyMoon rotates in close proximity to the earth's moon in the sky. Yet unlike the earth's satellite, it is visible outdoors and indoors.

In October 2017, Özkaya presented his latest major work En attendons (We Will Wait) at the Postmasters Gallery. The work is a recreation of Marcel Duchamp's Étant donnés from which Özkaya's also gets its name in anagram form. Özkaya claims to have discovered a secret hidden within Duchamp's piece. He proposes that it is not only a peephole into a diorama but that, under proper lighting, it also functions as a camera obscura that projects the French artist's self-portrait on a surface opposite the peephole. projects an image of Rrose Sélavy, "Duchamp’s female alter ego."

Exhibitions Selected solo exhibitions Lives and Works in Utrecht (2002), BeganeGrond, Utrecht, The Netherlands Minerva Street (2003), Galerist, Istanbul, Turkey Monet: A Retrospective (2006), Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany When He Came Back to His Senses, The Monster Was Still Waiting in Front of the Cave (2006), Galerist, Istanbul, Turkey Bring Me the Head Of… (2007), M on the Bund, Shanghai, China Dear Sir or Madam (2009), Slag Gallery New York City, NY, (2009) Today Could Be a Day of Historical Importance (2010), Slag Gallery, New York City, New York Homo Practicus (2010), Geleri Nev, Istanbul, Turkey David (inspired by Michelangelo) (2012), 21c Museum Hotel, Louisville, Kentucky One and Three Pasta (with George L. Legendre) (2012), Galerist, Istanbul, Turkey We Will Wait (2017), Postmasters Gallery, New York City this one is smaller than this one (2016), curated by Paulina Bebecka, Postmasters Gallery, New York City Truth or Dare: A Reality Show (2017), curated by Alice Gray Stites, 21c Museum Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee

Selected publications