ISTANBUL.- Galeri 77 hosts the first solo exhibition of young artist Mutlu Aksu, from April 9th to May 23rd. Mutlu Aksu’s exhibition Reality Show questions how everyday life is visually constructed and how our sense of reality is shaped within that construction. Through seemingly ordinary scenes, familiar objects, and socially coded figures, the artist makes visible the power relations, forms of pressure, and processes of internalization that individuals encounter in daily life.
A “reality show” is defined as a format in which real people’s real lives are presented in front of the camera. But when we watch a reality show, are we truly witnessing reality itself? Once the cameras are set, the lights adjusted, and the footage edited, can what appears on the screen still be considered real? When we reach for our phones each morning, reviewing, framing, and editing images before sharing them, to what extent can we speak of the reality of what we see? More importantly, how does what we call real life differ from a reality show?
Mutlu Aksu’s exhibition Reality Show, presented at Galeri 77, emerges precisely from within these questions. The artist turns his attention to the ordinary moments of everyday life, familiar objects, recognizable spaces, and the roles assigned to individuals by social structures. While making visible the power relations and symbols operating beneath this surface, he focuses on how individuals experience and, often unconsciously, internalize them. In doing so, he constructs a carefully staged visual narrative that distances itself from any claim to documentary representation.
In Aksu’s practice, the point of departure is often a personal observation, an image encountered on social media, or a tension felt within everyday life. This starting point is transformed into a social question in his works. The artist’s central concern is how the relationship between reality, representation, and identity operates within today’s visual culture. In particular, the visual norms disseminated by social media produce an implicit order that determines what is worth seeing, acceptable, or desirable. Aksu reconstructs both the aesthetic language and the ideological structure of this order in his artistic production.
One of the main strategies Aksu employs in constructing this visual order is the deliberate use of kitsch aesthetics. Glossy surfaces, decorative details, emotionally charged objects, and scenes that appear immediately legible at first glance create a sense of familiarity in the viewer; meanwhile, repeated figures, patterns, and forms connect this familiarity to the repetitive behavioral patterns of everyday life, social roles, and invisible mechanisms of pressure. Yet the artist does not simply affirm this order. The absurd positioning of the figures, the artificial tension of the scenes, and the subtle deviations within repetition reveal that the image does not offer a natural or stable reality. His smooth, controlled, and layered treatment of the surface, combined with flat areas of color, sharp contrasts, and oppressive backgrounds, further intensifies this artificiality. In this way, Aksu not only draws the viewer into a familiar visual world, but also prompts them to question how that world is constructed and by which aesthetic means it is legitimized. Reality Show invites viewers to reconsider contemporary visual culture, in which the boundary between the real and the constructed grows increasingly indistinct.
