Serdar Acar | Yılmaz Bulut: Pink Hills and The Mule

Pi Artworks Istanbul brings together two emerging artists based in Istanbul sharing a studio in Cihangir for the past five years. Serdar Acar (b. 1992, Istanbul) and Yilmaz Bulut (b. 1990, Tunceli)’s duo exhibition is titled Pink Hills and The Mule.

Serdar Acar’s recent subjects that has been central to his artistic practice are anxiety, desire and loss. In his current series Death, Mourning and All Other Desires, he focuses on the last fifteen months he has spent at home during the pandemic. Acar reflects on anxiety, loss and desires he has experienced during this time through his new painting series. Serdar Acar transfers outdoor images, which he calls “symbols of the uncanny”, using soft colours and simple language. In most of his compositions there are surreal figures positioned at the foot of his pink mountains or on green plains, and sometimes on the edge of a lake. In the exhibition Pink Hills and The Mule, the viewer approaches the gallery space and faces 45 individual 20x30cm paintings grid a long side three large paintings.

In the exhibition Pink Hills and the Mule, along side Acar’s paintings, there is a series of black and white drawings and sculptures of animal parts made from iron wires by Yilmaz Bulut. Yilmaz Bulut’s works present a narrative about the memory and human-nature. He carries out his works by considering the socio-political situations and processes of this togetherness with the conception of a human-animal. Yilmaz Bulut creates within an approach including fragments of socio-political events, these fragments come together and form layers in his works similar to the structure of memory. He presents the events to the viewer in a part-whole relationship including a reminder of the events through the parts. Just as a memory leaves a trace in life, the artist displays the same reflex with the lines.