Contemporary Istanbul 21th Edition
SEPTEMBER 23-29, 2026
For CI ‘26, OG Gallery brings together a selection of works that reflects the breadth and evolving character of its programme. Moving across painting, works on paper, photography, ceramics and sculpture, the presentation brings distinct artistic positions into conversation through recurring questions of the body, memory, materiality and image-making. From intimate works to large-scale installations, the booth is conceived not around a single theme, but as a constellation of individual practices—each with its own visual language, yet connected by an interest in how personal and collective experience can be translated into form. Together, the works offer a snapshot of OG Gallery’s current programme and its commitment to supporting singular artistic voices across generations and disciplines.
Selected Artists & Works
Defne Cemal
Cemal presents two new works from her Curves series, first introduced internationally through OG Gallery’s solo presentation at ARCOmadrid 2026. By mounting painted linen onto gently curved aluminium, the works move beyond the conventional picture plane, allowing painting to become a spatial and almost architectural experience that shifts with the viewer’s position.
Enes Debran
Debran’s works on paper emerge through a restrained palette of pigment, charcoal and watercolor, constructing psychologically charged figures that oscillate between portraiture and imagined presence. Presented in different scales, the works reveal his distinctive approach to the face as a site of ambiguity, intimacy and psychological tension.
Sine İçli
At the centre of İçli’s presentation is Fun House (2026), an ambitious ceramic installation measuring approximately three by four-and-a-half metres and conceived on an architectural scale. Composed of individually formed ceramic elements, the work expands İçli’s sculptural language into an immersive environment in which the domestic, the bodily and the fantastical coexist.
Gökçe İrten
İrten presents two large-scale ceramic works composed through modular, hand-painted elements, continuing her investigation into the relationship between the individual unit and the collective whole. Fragmented geometric forms accumulate into interconnected structures, reflecting her broader interest in individuality, collective memory and the ways in which the self is shaped by its surrounding environment.
Mizuki Nishiyama
Nishiyama’s paintings bring together oil, Japanese ink and natural pigments in a highly physical approach to the painted surface. Daffodils (2025) and Crimson Blue (2026) move between figuration, memory and gestural abstraction, creating landscapes that feel simultaneously intimate and psychologically charged.
Levent Özruh
With Column_1_002, Özruh transforms sand into an intricate sculptural architecture, bringing together material experimentation and an almost archaeological sense of form. The work appears at once constructed and excavated, positioning fragility and permanence in deliberate tension.
Yaz Taşçı
Taşçı presents a group of new paintings in which intimate scenes, bodies and recurring figures unfold through a direct and psychologically charged painterly language. Moving between tenderness, humour and unease, the works transform seemingly private moments into ambiguous narratives that resist a single reading.
Zeynep Solakoğlu
Making of a Late Bloomer (2025) belongs to Solakoğlu’s Late Bloomer body of ceramic works, in which vessel-like forms become exuberant, almost bodily characters. Through richly layered surfaces, colour and ornament, Solakoğlu approaches transformation and self-formation with a language that moves between vulnerability, humour and excess.
Cansu Yıldıran
Yıldıran’s photographic practice brings questions of identity, belonging and lived experience into an image that sits between observation and constructed narrative. Shot over the course of several months in the United States, Cansu Yıldıran’s America series brings together photographs made during her time travelling across the country. Works from the series are presented here for the first time, offering an intimate and personal observation of the people, places and encounters that shaped her experience of America. Müzeyyen ablanın yalnız telaşı vardı (2022) introduces photography into the presentation, extending the booth’s exploration of the body and personal experience through a distinctly photographic language.