‘MIRROR I AM: SILVER AND EXACT’ Phoebe Cummings Mübin Orhon

Galerist and Galeri Nev are proud to present ‘Mirror I Am: Silver and Exact’, a duo exhibition by Phoebe Cummings and Mübin Orhon taking place at Galerist from April 21 to June 11, 2022. Taking its title from a poem by Sylvia Plath, the exhibition sheds light on the multidimensional reflections between the two artists. Encountering each other in a monochrome world, Cummings and Orhon often meet through an experience of disappearance.

Phoebe Cummings, whose disciplines span sculpture, craft and performance, explores ceramics as a time-based medium. Each intricately modelled work is durational; the same clay may be reused as part of a new work through an ongoing process of making and forming. Whereas Orhon’s works completely eliminate the concept of time, especially in the gouache paintings featured in the exhibition, covered with a layer of silver that withstands the passage of time as they preserve their shine for over half a century. However, it is the artist’s life that eventually dissolves.

In her Stafford studio covered in living plants, Phoebe Cummings takes her inspiration from nature, along with literature, decorative arts and the history of ceramics. The baroque aesthetic of her sculptures is drawn from an observation of the dialogue between the environment and plants.

His Paris studio consisting of a few modest pieces of furniture gifted by the Sainsbury family, Mübin Orhon was inspired by glimmer and colours that shift swiftly with light. In contrast with Cummings' baroque aesthetic, Orhon's art is modernist and spiritual. The artist was among the pioneers of this language in Paris following the Second World War.

In ‘Mirror I Am: Silver and Exact’, Mübin Orhon's paintings from 1972-73 belonging to the same palette brought together for the first time, are accompanied by Phoebe Cummings's site-specific sculptures. 

Phoebe Cummings, 1981

Born in 1981 in Walsall UK, based in Stafford, Phoebe Cummings studied 3D Design and Craft at the University of Brighton, before completing an MA in Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art (2005). Cummings attended artist residencies in the UK, USA and Greenland, and was the winner of the 2011 British Ceramics Biennial Award. Cummings has exhibited in the UK and internationally, including commissions for the Museum of Arts & Design, New York; University of Hawai’i Art Gallery, Honolulu; Jerwood Space, London and ClayArch Museum, South Korea. In 2015, photographs and film of Production Line were acquired for the permanent collections of York Art Gallery, Southampton City Art Gallery, and Shipley Art Gallery. Cummings has taught extensively as a visiting artist at institutions including the Royal College of Art, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Harvard University, Royal Danish Academy of Art, and Bergen Academy of Art & Design. She was awarded a fellowship at Camden Arts Centre (2012-13), was the inaugural winner of the BBC Woman’s Hour Craft Prize 2017 for her work Triumph of the Immaterial at the V&A and was shortlisted for the Arts Foundation Awards 2018. She is a Research Associate at the University of Westminster, Ceramics Research Centre and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Brighton in 2019.

Mübin Orhon (1924-1981)

Mübin Orhon studied political science in Istanbul. Following his graduation in 1947, he traveled to France for his master’s degree in economy. During his first years in Paris, he attended drawing classes at the Grande Chaumière Academy. Between 1950 and 1953, he participated in the exhibitions of Salon de Réalités Nouvelles, and between 1956 and 1957 he took part in Salons de Mai. He opened his first solo exhibition in 1956 at Galerie Iris Clert, one of the most avant-garde galleries of the French capital. During that period, he established close ties with César, Takis, Messagier and Giacometti; his close friendship with Charles Maussion that began in the same period lasted a lifetime. In 1964, he returned to Turkey for his military service and continued with his shows in Istanbul. In 1973 he went back to France and died in Paris in 1981. In the early 1960s, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury showed great interest in Mübin’s works. As a result of this interest that grew steadily until the artist’s death, sixty three of his works are collected by the Sainsbury couple, in addition to other works in their collection by Degas, Bonnard, Modigliani, Picasso, Balthus, Giacometti and Bacon. Thus Mübin, along with his close friend Maussion, became one of the two most widely represented artists of the post-war “Ecole de Paris” era in this collection. In 1996, Mübin’s works in the Sainsbury Collection were exhibited in Turkey for the first time at the Yapı Kredi Kazım Taşkent Gallery, under the curatorship of Ali Artun Galeri Nev has been representing Mübin Orhon since first exhibition at the gallery in 1992, the artist’s archive is being protected by NevArşiv.