OG Gallery is pleased to present a solo booth by Defne Cemal at ARCO Madrid in the Opening. New Galleries section, featuring a focused presentation of her Curves series alongside a selection of paintings on canvas.

In Curves, Cemal extends her painterly inquiry into space by mounting oil on linen or muslin onto vertically folded sheets of aluminum. Each work—subtly bent into a shallow arc—refuses the neutrality of the flat support. The surface becomes both image and object: a plane that holds color while simultaneously projecting into the viewer’s space. The gentle curvature activates light and shadow, allowing tonal passages—deep blues, oxidized reds, muted greys, and near-whites—to shift according to movement and perspective.

Cemal’s practice is grounded in an exploration of material tension and restraint. Her compositions unfold through layered gestures, diffused fields of pigment, and quiet transitions that recall both geological surfaces and bodily presence. The fold operates not as rupture but as a soft inflection—an embodied line that introduces volume without spectacle. In these works, painting is neither purely illusionistic nor fully sculptural; it hovers between states, holding fragility and structure in delicate balance.

Presented together with a selection of canvas works, the booth highlights Cemal’s sustained investigation into how color, support, and subtle physical intervention can expand the language of painting. At ARCO Madrid, Curves proposes painting as a spatial experience—one that is at once intimate, tactile, and quietly architectural.