DEPARTING SKIES: Serdar Arat 1987-2017 Art Exhibition in OSilas Gallery

OSilas Gallery at Concordia College is pleased to announce the opening of DEPARTING SKIES: Serdar Arat, 1987-2017 on March 22 at 7pm.  “Authority and mysticism” are the dual sensibilities underlying Arat’s work, which he describes as the essence of his Turkish roots.

Coming of age in Istanbul in the 1970’s, living and working in New York since 1980, and exhibiting his work mainly in New York City and Istanbul, Arat has been exploring – in his words, “distilling” – both the political upheavals, and the highly personal narratives of this time.  In fact, in Arat’s work, the consequences of political and personal experiences are inseparable, and the life of mind merges with that of the spirit.

Several threads of Serdar Arat’s work come together in this exhibition. The earliest work in the exhibition from 1987 features an actual metal vent attached to a black and white lithograph, begins the exploration of the next thirty years: reality always teetering in between two and three dimensions, incorporating actual depth alongside its illusion, both teasing and contradicting our perception of depth. View

The latest piece in the exhibition is Arat’s first fully three dimensional work: a 26 foot-long sculptural landscape installation, strewn with over a hundred forms and fragments, in mixed media including bronze, copper and ceramic.  A lifetime’s discipline of subdued three dimensionality, gives way to an explosion of sculptural forms, coming straight out of the metaphorical imagery of the paintings and works on paper. View