Bilal Hakan Karakaya: Earthly Realm

January 30, 2020 – March 8, 2020
Free entry. Tue – Sat: 12–19.00 and Sunday 12–18.00

Anna Laudel, Kazancı Yokuşu No: 45, Gümüşsuyu Mah., Beyoğlu, 34437 Istanbul

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Bilal Hakan Karakaya is not timid about pushing back the narrative boundaries of traditional sculpture. In his latest show, Earthly Realm, he offers a play on Dante’s Divine Comedy, with a different story on each floor, leading the visitor by the hand from Hell to Purgatory to Paradise.

Technically, however, he often reverses the usual static structure of the sculpture; structures that should become thinner at the top gradually thicken and enlarge as they rise.

Adam & Eve, 2017, Mixed media, 43 x 100 x 200 cm

Working in resin and industrial and natural recycled materials, Karakaya grapples with impressions of individuals trapped in the chaos of modern city life. His interpretation of the complex structure of daily life is full of symbolism and attempts to establish a relationship between the past and the present.

The sculptor Bilal Hakan Karakaya was born in 1979 in Ankara and studied at the city's Gazi University. He currently works in Istanbul