Ahmet Güneştekin

[1966] Born in Batman, Turkey.
[1997] In his first studio in the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul, he discovers a way to turn his experiences from his journeys following his passion for seeing unknown ways of life – a passion first fostered in the dreams of his childhood universe – into an aesthetic.
[2003] His first major exhibition, Colours After Darkness has a spellbinding effect due to the intensity of its recollection of childhood.
[2005 - 2010] In the ethnographic excursions arranged for his documentary film series Tracing Sun, he follows the traces of microworlds. The equivalencies he finds in life are the fantastic stories and fairy tales he listened to as a child, which have a formative impact on his visual memory as much as on his emotional world.
[2010] He opens Güneştekin Art Center in Beyoğlu. He develops a visual understanding based on stratified constructs and superposed imagery, the use of optical components, three-dimensional gradients and colour alignment.
[2012] The reinterpretation of myths in a modern vernacular becomes a way for him to show the way memories are constructed in the present. Formed into an intricate whole comprising elements of different cultures and ways of life, oral narratives give shape to a world of thought. The past forms the nucleus of his work in the exhibition, Encounter.
[March 2013] In his installation Momentum of Memory, he explores the social and psychological processes underlying collective memory by questioning how memory structures the past and how, with its specificity, it shapes culture. The exhibition in Arsenale coincided with the 2013 Venice Biennale, marks an important threshold for him, after which he begins working with the Marlborough Gallery.
[2014] He makes use of and arranges materials in original ways and the dynamism enveloping his works has carried him to centres of art around the world.
[May 2015] Ahmet with his sculptures Million Stone and installation Konstantiniyye creates a subjectivity different to the Op Art of Victor Vasarely and the popular images created in the sculptures of Robert Indiana. Coincided with the Venice Biennale in La Pieta, the exhibition by Marlborough Gallery leaves a miraculous impression on the global art audience in Venice.
[April 2017] He is being represented by Berlin-based Galerie Michael Schultz. The gallery opens Sun Road in Berlin, an exhibition of his works that reflect his stylistic transformation over the last decade.
[September 2017] He revisits the destruction engrained on the memory of his homeland and the recent history that has yet to be faced up to in his installation Neverthere and his short film Decay.
[September 2018] Chamber of Immortality, his colossal installation woven around themes of journey and the search for eternal life, finds a starting and end point in the synthesis of his world of thought. He comments anew on scenes known from founding myths and from the inscriptions made by early humans on their monoliths uncovered in Göbekli Tepe.
[November 2018] Reflection and Resumption, his first survey exhibition opens simultaneously at Vasarely Museum, Janus Pannonius Museum and Zsolnay Museum in Pecs. Embracing a diverse range of work and bringing together two prominent artists, the survey exhibition speaks of the dialogue between the works of Victor Vasarely and Ahmet Güneştekin and traces the genealogy of the dialogue.

Solo Exhibitons

Reflection and Resumption, 15 November 2018 – 1 February 2019, Vasarely Museum, Janus Pannonius Museum, Zsolnay Museum, Pecs.
Generation Patchwork, 22 June 2018 – 3 August 2018, Kunsthalle Brennabor, represented by Galerie Michael Schultz, Brandenburg.
Personal Mythologies, 11 March 2018 – 15 April 2018, Mark Peet Visser Gallery, ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
Blue Legend, 5 June 2017 –31 August 2017, Rosenhang Museum, represented by Galerie Michael Schultz, Weilburg.
Raconteur of Colors, 3 May2017 – 1 October 2017, Kunsthalle Dresden, represented by Galerie Michael Schultz, Dresden.
Sun Road, 29 April 2017 – 20 May 2017, Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin.
In Other Worlds: The Work of Ahmet Güneştekin, 11 January 2017 – 4 February 2017, Marlborough Gallery, New York.
The Poetics of Mythology, 11 October 2016 – 26 November 2016, Beyoğlu Municipality Art Gallery, Istanbul.
The Power of Origins, 5 November 2015 – 12 December 2015, Marlborough Barcelona, Barcelona.
Million Stone, 6 May 2015 – 22 November 2015, represented by Marlborough Gallery, La Pietà, Venice.
The Heir to the Solar Disk, 18 September 2014 – 14 November 2014, Marlborough Monaco, Monaco.
Faces of the Sun, 21 April 2014 – 18 May 2014, Mark Peet Visser Gallery, ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
Ahmet Güneştekin: Recent Paintings, 26 November 2013 – 4 January 2014, Marlborough Gallery, New York.
Momentum of Memory, 29 March 2013 – 25 August 2013, Arsenale Docks, Venice.
Encounter Ankara, 22 January 2013 – 14 April 2013, CerModern, Ankara.
A Lot, 12 May 2012 – 30 June 2012, Güler Art Gallery, Ankara.
Encounter Istanbul, 6 November 2012 – 30 December 2012, Antrepo 3, Istanbul.