Nilbar Gures: Magnet and the Moon

Curated by Kevser Guler

Galerist proudly announces the representation of Nilbar Güreş who will be showing a selection of her recent works in Magnet and The Moon, a solo exhibition on view from September 6 until October 12, 2019. The exhibition curated by Kevser Güler will present a remarkable variety of Güreş’s practice which includes painting, collage, photography, sculpture and video installations.

The exhibition concentrates on the prominent forms and subjects Nilbar Güreş has been drawn to in recent years. Through the sculptures, spatial interventions she forms using miscellaneous materials including cloth, salt, metal and thread, and staged photographs, collages, and the video installations the artist addresses the images of the body and the land; and gestures of fiction and fantasies embedded in sexuality and pleasure. Engaging with the political and artistic possibilities of queer and trans feminist practices, Güreş pursues an embodied subjectivity in the context of daily practices and in various systems of oppression.

The artist looks up to fluid, transing, lubricous bodies which enjoy pleasure and bear pain; and to agents, forms and movements that aren’t restrained to only being images. Güreş is interested in the practice of covering and opening up, admitting or neglecting; sanctifying or blaspheming the existence of bodies in relation to various kinds of oppression and control systems including religions, colonialism, gender binarism and contemporary media culture.

Magnet and The Moon invites the viewer to an exciting encounter to discover Nilbar Güreş’s recent conceptual and formal projections.

About Nilbar Güreş  
Nilbar Güreş (b. 1977, Istanbul) received a BA in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Marmara University, İstanbul, and an MA in Painting & Graphics from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Upon recieving her MA, the artist studied Art and Textile Pedagogy at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Nilbar Güreş’s practice spans performance, video, sculpture, installation and mixed media collage on fabric. Güreş’s works depart from biography then swirls around to address larger issues. Her intelligence in reading inherent cultural symbols combined with her extensive knowledge and deep appreciation of local crafts enables her to imbue social messages within her oeuvre. Güreş is particularly sound to social injustice, gender roles and cultural identity codes—she researches, documents and finds poetic ways to flout conventions in witty figurations.

Some of the major exhibitions Güreş has participated in include The Time Needs Changing Pera Museum, Istanbul (2018); The Way Beyond Art, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (2017); 20th Biennale of Sydney, Cockatoo Island, Australia (2016); Serralves Museum, Porto (2015); Malmö Konstmuseum (2015); Artspace Auckland (2015); SeMa Biennale Mediacity Seoul (2014); EVA International Ireland’s Biennial, Limerick City (2014); The 31. Bienal de Sao Paulo (2014) Signs Taken in Wonder, MAK, Vienna (2013); Envy, Enmity, Embarrassment, ARTER, İstanbul (2013); Rosa Arbeit auf Goldener Strasse, Akademie der bildenden Kunste Wien, Vienna (2012); Dream and Reality, İstanbul Museum of Modern Art (2011); What is Waiting Out There, 6th Berlin Biennale (2010); Where Do We Go From Here?,secession, Vienna (2010); What Keeps Mankind Kind Alive?, 11th International İstanbul Biennial (2009); and the travelling exhibition titled Tactics of Invisibility, which was exhibited at Thyssen- Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna (2010), TANAS, Berlin (2010–11), and ARTER, İstanbul (2011). Her solo shows include Nilbar Güreş: Nilbar Wien-Na at Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna (2013); Undressing, Museums Quartier, Vienna (2011); Self-Defloration, Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart (2011); Nilbar Güreş, at RAMPA, İstanbul, and at Iniva, London (2010–11); Nilbar Güreş: Window Commission 2010, Rivington Place, London (2010); as well as Unknown Sports. “Indoor Exercises”, at Salzburger Kunstverein (2009). In 2012, Güreş completed a residency at International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York, supported by BMUKK, Vienna. She received the Hilde Goldschmidt Prize in 2013, the Otto Mauer Award of 2014, Fifth edition of the BC21 (Belvedere Contemporary) Art Award 2015 in Austria, and De’Longhi Art Projects Artist Award of London Art Fair in 2018.

Nilbar Güreş lives and works in Vienna and Istanbul.