Upon a Rock, I Grew, an exhibition centred on the artistic practice of Melike Abasıyanık Kurtiç, will be on view from January 15, hosted by Galerist in collaboration with Galeri Nev and realised with the support of the Kale Design and Art Center (KTSM). Unfolding from Melike Abasıyanık Kurtiç’s retrospective exhibition titled Memoirs of a Sea Urchin, held at the Erimtan Archaeology and Arts Museum in 2024, the exhibition brings together Abasıyanık Kurtiç’s works with artists whose practices resonate with her modes of thinking, understanding of form, and relationship with material. While Memoirs of a Sea Urchin approached the artist’s practice as a layered field of production marked by an inward intensity, Upon a Rock, I Grew investigates how forms and conceptual trajectories extending from this universe reverberate within the practices of other artists.
In her writings, Abasıyanık speaks of seeking a universal subconscious in the spines of the sea urchin, within the inner space of the shell, and in the texture of stone. She thus calls upon artists to explore the depths of this shared subconscious, to gather within the cavity of darkness that captivated her, and to take root in one another.
Upon a Rock, I Grew brings together Abasıyanık – whose ceramic practice is nourished by countless drawings, watercolours, photographs, and installations, and marked by continual acts of translation from one medium to another – with artists who pursue depth across different channels within their practices. The selection of works by Deniz Aktaş, Ece Bal, Gökhun Baltacı, İlhan Berk, Zeynep Kayan, Thiago Rocha Pitta, Anıl Saldıran, Johanna Seidel, Elif Uras, Burcu Yağcıoğlu, and Masao Yamamoto also extends towards another of Abasıyanık’s sacred domains: literature, through verses typed on İlhan Berk’s typewriter. In this way, visitors encounter the richness of ceramic as a material – so often regarded as belonging to the realm of craft – and experience the full breadth of its expressive potential.
Rather than establishing a hierarchical centre–periphery relationship, the practices presented in the exhibition form a plural ground of encounter, in which each maintains its own language and autonomy. Within these encounters, the works of other artists enter into dialogue with the ideas of repetition, circularity, and recurrence that emerge prominently in Melike Abasıyanık Kurtiç’s practice – at times through converging contours of form, at others through imaginal affinities and visual mimicry – thereby becoming woven into her world. Repetition here appears not merely as a manifestation of fixation or obsession, but as a field of thought in which form folds in on itself and proliferates, shifts direction through subtle deviations, and meaning moves quietly within.