Show Me Color | 2021

Semiha Berksoy / Marguerite Bornhauser / Çınar Eslek

Kasa Gallery hosts the exhibition titled “Give Me Color” between December 12 and April 23. Curated by Yekhan Pınarlıgil, the exhibition brings together the works of Marguerite Bornhauser, Çınar Eslek and Semiha Berksoy. It explores the relationship between skin, spirit and color through the interactions within the artists’ productions and creative processes.

According to the curator Yekhan Pınarlıgil, “If the skin is truly the shell of the self, an interface between the inner and outer worlds, and even a direct passage to the deepest layers of the self, then perhaps the battles fought for it are not so futile after all. There is an unmediated relationship between skin and spirit; the skin is perhaps the main tool, organ or even more, the sensory network that plays the most significant role in the formation of the self a cover, an envelope. A beginning, but also a boundary. It is the final checkpoint that both opens to and holds together the dizzying world of complex impulses.”

To “give color” means to reveal oneself, to make one’s intention and stance visible, to display, to expose. It is the act of coming into the open when one could have remained hidden, of showing one’s hand. Yet color also evokes an expectation that points to the essentials of art itself: the painter’s palette, the videographer’s pixels, the photograph’s reds, blacks and whites. To give color directs the viewer toward the artist’s fundamental gesture, for by giving color, the artist reveals themselves; by giving color, they exist.

The three artists featured in the exhibition each question the relationship between skin and color from different perspectives. Through the use of colors that we are not accustomed to seeing, they whisper that the skin is the first frontier that must be conquered in order to resist normalization. The exhibition can be viewed at Kasa Gallery on weekdays between 10:00 and 17:00 until April 23.