Haluk Akakçe was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1970. He studied architecture at Bilkent University in Ankara, and then received an MFA in video and performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He currently lives and works in London and New York where he mainly produces videos which incorporate elements of painting, architecture, sculpture and sound.

Haluk Akakçe’s work includes animated video projections, wall paintings and sound installations, revealing abstract and dream-like landscapes where biology, architecture, geometry and metaphysics coexist. The works draw from an eclectic set of aesthetic references: Celtic and Islamic architecture, Art Deco, science-fiction, American comic books and current fashions. The visual texture of the animations is familiar from computer games and pop videos, yet this reclamation of a form of contemporary popular culture creates a new formal language for gallery-based art.

In Blind Date (2004) Akakçe employs an ideologically laden white on white language. The endlessly mutating geometric reliefs which emerge and retreat from the milky white ground recall pioneering British abstract artist Ben Nicholson’s (1894 – 1982) early white reliefs, or the pierced façade of Le Corbusier's chapel at Ronchamp. The projection works within the architectural confines of the space, the contrast between the static modernism of the building and the endless scrolling forms on the screen plays with the idea of depth and flatness, of positive and negative spatial values. A kind of hallucinatory rolling motion forces the viewer to bring their own associations to the forms, while the work demonstrates the idea of creating duration within a plane surface.

Akakçe has exhibited extensively in Britain and internationally. Selected exhibitions include Deitch Projects, New York 2009; Max Hetzler Gallery, Berlin, CAAM Las Palmas, Spain, Museum Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, 2005; Tate Britain, London, 2004; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, 2003 and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Shanghai Biennial and the São Paulo Bienal, 2002.

Made in Britain Contemporary Art from the British Council Collection 1980-2010,China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing Corporation 2010. ISBN 978-7-5059-7014-4.

Glossary

  • Contemporary

    Existing or coming into being at the same period; of today or of the present. The term that designates art being made today.

  • Negative

    An image in which colours and shades of an inage are reversed: the light areas of the object appear dark and the dark areas appear light. Also refers to a film, plate, or other photographic material containing such an image.

  • Painting

    Work of art made with paint on a surface. Often the surface, also called a support, is a tightly stretched piece of canvas, paper or a wooden panel. Painting involves a wide range of techniques and materials, along with the artist's intellectual concerns effecting the content of a work.

  • Sculpture

    A three-dimensional work of art. Such works may be carved, modelled, constructed, or cast. Sculptures can also be described as assemblage, in the round, relief, and made in a huge variety of media. Contemporary practice also includes live elements, as in Gilbert & George 'Living Sculpture' as well as broadcast work, radio or sound sculpture.

  • Video

    Images recorded on videotape or on optical disc to be viewed on television screens, or projected onto screens. The medium through which these images are recorded and displayed.