ISTANBUL.- Pi Artworks İstanbul opened on April 15th Serdar Acar’s first solo exhibition, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which will continue through May 20th, 2023. The artist focuses on loneliness in the present day and on the various forms of existence one can experience in isolation. In doing so, he creates alternative forms of existence for individuals through his paintings.
“The title of the exhibition is influenced and borrowed from William Shakespeare’s infamous play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, in keeping with this, the show embraces concepts that are similar to the main themes of the play. More explicitly, Acar explores themes embodied by the play’s title and his work wanders through the fringes of loneliness, touching on love –both imperfect and unrequited - destiny, loss, imagination, dream and reality, childhood, madness and the irrationality of life.
Serdar Acar creates unique, semi-poetic, semi-dreamy scenes by focusing on the most beloved themes in art historical tradition: landscape and figure. Acar’s captivating works become more chilling in their detail: so small compared to nature, they render mundane problems insignificant by forcing us to visualise our existence in large landscapes. The artist has been on a passionate journey of self-discovery and self-knowledge for a long time, and this experience and the self he transforms into – the anonymous silhouette - become leitmotifs of his paintings...
Acar also includes fundamental motifs, such as houses, roads, boats and forests, that stimulate childhood memories in his pastel coloured paintings. However, cypress trees and the anonymous silhouette are images that we also encounter in nearly every composition. These can be seen as icons that obsessively tread the line between imagination and reality...
Ultimately, Acar opens a window to his own life without interfering with the lives of others. Nature itself and its shadow cover the whole frame in the painting, and a boy watches himself where no one surrounds him, the absence of his shadow being very meaningful. The paradise of childhood, which we thought was lost, perhaps never existed at all.” - Esra Aliçavuşoğlu, 2023, Istanbul
Serdar Acar (b.1992) lives and works in İstanbul.
Major exhibitions include; A Midsummer Night's Dream (solo), Pi Artworks Istanbul, Turkey (2023); Back Home (solo), Naya Studio, Istanbul, Turkey (2021), Pink Hills and Mule (duo), Pi Artworks Istanbul, Turkey (2021); Silence (solo), Gallery Muaf, Istanbul, Turkey (2019); Equivalence (solo), Sevil Dolmacı Art Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2018); Sezi, Artsurem Gallery, Ankara, Turkey (2018); Always at Home, Gallery Muaf, Istanbul, Turkey (2018); Rota Art Award Exhibition, Plato Art, Istanbul, Turkey (2018); Over and over, Mixer Arts, İstanbul, Turkey (2018); Young, Fresh, Different IX, Zillberman Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2018); Venue Atelier, Cer Modern, Ankara, Turkey (2018); Artist 2016- Unexpected Territories, TÜYAP, İstanbul, Turkey (2016); Graduation Exhibition, MUGSF (Mimar Sinan University) Main Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2016); O’art Competition Exhibition, Odeabank Main Building, Istanbul, Turkey (2016), Painting Exhibition, MUGSF Main Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2016) ve Reconciliation, Alegory Art Center, Istanbul, Turkey.
