Outdoor Art in New York – An Exhibition of Photographs by İlhan Mimaroğlu

14 December 2016 – 15 January 2017

Curated by: E. Ahmet Tonak / Nevzat Sayın
Music: Serdar Ateşer
Graphics: Dilara Sezgin

A master of electronic music, İlhan Mimaroğlu (1926-2012) collaborated with numerous artists including Jean Dubuffet, Federico Fellini, Freddie Hubbard, and Charles Mingus. Though better known in Turkey and throughout the world as a musician, Mimaroğlu was also active in film and photography; indeed, he published two books on these subjects, respectively Sinema Köşelerinde and New York Kapı Dışı Sanatı . Of these, New York Kapı Dışı Sanatı brought together Mimaroğlu’s photographs of New York’s murals and was first published by YKY in 2002; that edition soon went out of print. The show at Depo exhibits some of these photographs. On the occasion of the exhibition, YKY is bringing out a new edition of the book.

High-resolution digital scans of all the images in New York Kapı Dışı Sanatı were prepared from Mimaroğlu’s original transparencies, for use in both the exhibition and the new edition. The works to be exhibited were selected by E. Ahmet Tonak and Nevzat Sayın; the music was composed by Serdar Ateşer.

Mimaroğlu was always critical of the involvement of capital in the arts, and of the commodification of artwork. Thus, he described the use of walls by outdoor artists in New York as follows: “The caveman had no choice but to use a wall. There were no museums, galleries, connoisseurs, or investors back then. Now all those do exist, and so it was necessary to rediscover the wall.” Mimaroğlu’s choice of noncommercial outdoor art as the subject of his photography is a sign of his political stance as well.

 icon-file-text Booklet

Nevzat Sayın
Serdar Ateşer
E. Ahmet Tonak