06 Nov 2013

BAP//ISTANBUL: Yaşam Şaşmazer's Book Launch

'...The starting point for the young and already extensive oeuvre by the Turkish sculptor is the body, with its gestures, postures, and internal states, as expressions of an immaterial side, the world of the imagination. Sasmazer herself speaks of 'soul pictures'. What materializes in these child protagonists are deep, inner processes of perception and descriptions of various conditions. This connection between physicality and mental state draws the imagination to the fore, making it the center and key to accessing the work. The imaginary, or that which exists only in the imagination, would be nothing were it not for the similarities between the imagined and the real, without the related field between image and emotion, reflection and difference. It is precisely this difference — between the real image and the projected idea — that gives Yasam Sasmazer's sculptures their presence.
 
The sculptor has chosen to carve her figures out of wood. The traces of the carving process are intentionally left visible, scoring the surface of what is shaped into skin and fabrics, giving us the sense of a person or child while simultaneously allowing us to experience the volume and nature of the material. There is a clear departure from a straight realism. This procedure favors the sculptural or artificial over realism with regard to the object, the children, men and women we encounter in their full physicality...'Johannes Odenthal

Yasam Sasmazer was born in Istanbul in 1980. She studied and graduated from the Sculpture department in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University in 2003. She completed her Master's degree at her alma mater in 2006. She has had several solo exhibitions and has participated in many group exhibitions in Turkey, Europe and the USA including the exhibition Confessions of Dangerous Minds: Contemporary Art from Turkey at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2011. Sasmazer's most recent solo shows are Doppelganger at Künstlerhaus Marktoberdorf (2012), Illuminated Darkness at Aubin Gallery London (2011), It's so complicated at Berlin Art Projects (2010). Her work is featured on the cover of Unleashed, Thames and Hudson, 2010. Sasmazer, whose works are also included in public institutions and prominent private collections in the Middle East and Europe, lives and works in Istanbul and Berlin.

BAP//ISTANBUL by Tarik Ersin Yoleri aims to support young artists at the beginning of their careers by providing their appreance at the right platforms to recieve the attention of international art scene. On this focus BAP//ISTANBUL by Tarik Yoleri promotes the represented young contemporary artists by local and international exhibitions, art fairs and achieves the permanent participation of the art works to the private, corporate and museum collections locally and internationally.