Ellen de Bruijne Projects is proud to present the first solo show in the gallery with new and recent work by Kubilay Mert Ural: Cheapskate.
Kubilay Mert Ural’s (Turkey, 1986) work opens a window into the desires, frustrations, and ultimately into our needs of the present times, now. On an infinite and open-ended loop, the work reminds us of the swing between chaos and order. It sometimes gives us an incomplete story, or a story that just occasionally pops up… Each one is a quest, an encounter, a playful invitation toward aspects of the uncomfortable, and a reminder of cheap melodies from imagined worlds.
The artist started within the framework of video, at first more related to the music scene than to visual arts. When he moved to Sandberg and later on to the Rijksakademie he got caught by the possibilities of using the language of painting.
Kubilay Mert Ural has a way of capturing otherworldly images. His videos, installations and paintings function like passages, inviting the viewer to traverse his/our primordial thoughts. The global reality as we know it today is one of confusion and chaos, indistinguishable from a bad dream. Dicey world leaders, post-colonial tensions, the endless abuse of power: these impressions are mixed with moments of absurdity — bondage of a world leader, a defecating ghost, inter-species copulation. In these visual narratives time and space collapse, past and future unfold on a single plane. Looming in the background is often the presence of an unidentified flying object, a hovering question about the eternal desire for mystery, belief systems, and possible answers for humanity. Ural is captivated by such fascinations, as well as consoled by these hypnagogic visions.
