Deniz Aktaş
About
Deniz Aktaş's meticulous ink drawings on paper are reconstructed daring depictions of nature, unsound structures, still-life myths with questionable existence and remnants of archaic structures that still exist today. Aktaş examines traumas imprinted on a city’s memory through a perspective of human - space relationship. The images carefully depicted by the artist bear the marks of urban transformation, forced evictions, demolishment and even the traces of conflict subtle but observable on the structures of a complicated, recondite and disheveled city
Deniz Aktaş, born in 1987 in Diyarbakır (Turkey), lives and works between Istanbul and Diyarbakır. Deniz Aktaş completed his BFA at Marmara University on painting and MFA at Yeditepe University, Istanbul.
Selected solo and group shows include, Permafrost, La Panacée-MoCo (Montpellier Contemporain), Montpellier, France (2020); “Seventh Continent”, 16th Istanbul Biennial (curated by Nicolas Bourriaud) 2019; "No Man's Land" at artSümer (solo), Istanbul (2018), In Pursuit of the Present, Istanbul Modern Museum, Istanbul (2018); "Impossible Space" (curated by Derya Yücel) Kasa Gallery, Istanbul (2017); "Wider den Grautönen" (curated by Ceren Erdem), Pasinger Fabrik Gmbh, Munich (2016) and Mythologies, 3rd Mardin Biennial (2015). Aktaş participated at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris residency programme in 2016 and ARTER’s artistic research programme in 2020 in Istanbul. Aktaş is one of the 100 artists that will be featured in Phaidon Press's Vitamin D3: New Perspectives in Drawing to be published in 2021.
