Yeldeğirmeni, İstanbul
For the second episode of Istanbul Stories, we meet Toygun Özdemir at his studio in Yeldeğirmeni on a Saturday morning.
Walking through the narrow streets of Yeldeğirmeni, with the opening sounds of small local shops around us, we arrive at Toygun’s light-filled studio. Toygun welcomes us in front of a canvas he is currently working on. This space is both his studio and his living space.
Born in İzmir in 1986, Toygun usually starts his day by painting. He describes this ritual as something close to picking flowers. Toygun is now in his 16th year in this studio. When he first rented the space, it used to be a dry cleaner. As the studio found its character over the years, Toygun’s visual language and way of storytelling also became more defined.
Although painting has been a defining part of his life since high school, Toygun has also worked, and continues to work, across different creative fields such as photography and music. His visual language started by imitating cartoons, later expanding through references from caricature to mythology, eventually finding its own form. Since the early years of his career, he has been part of Öktem Aykut.
We talk with Toygun about his production practice, where and how his story began, mistakes, coincidences, and the things he loves and hates about painting.
Toygun Özdemir (1986, Izmir), received his bachelor’s degree in painting from Mimar Sinan University’s Faculty of Fine Arts. Based in Istanbul since then, Özdemir adopts a flexible stylistic approach, and this characteristic fluidity also applies to the subject matter of his paintings. In his landscapes, the artist reflects the flux in nature through the liquidity of paint. In his figurative work, he conjures up characters enmeshed in the complexity of the 21st century, rendering them in absurd and paradoxical situations that are reflective of the artist’s idiosyncratic dark humor. He has had four past one-person exhibitions at Öktem Aykut; Golden Age (2022); Happy-Go-Lucky (2019); Stranger (2016) and Complete Paintings (2016).
Each month, our YouTube channel brings together conversations from artists’ inner worlds to stories of Istanbul.
A Film by ait istanbul & Poolfolks
Video Artists: Yiğit Demir, Kadir Özer
Photography: Kerem Günaydınlar
Artist Programming: Tuna Pektaş
Art Direction: Eylül Günaydınlar
Graphic Design: Kutay Yılmaz, Buğra Örs
Project Development: Darya Anzabi,
Selin Kantarcıoğlu, Zeynep Atav
VIEW ALL DIALOGUE
