"Re-deciphered Scripts 2023 Performative Installation 28 hand-built terracotta ceramic bottles/jars
In this installation where creativity meets a performative experience, the artist embarks on a profound journey into the origins and evolution of ancient languages. The languages of the rich civilizations of the Middle East are scrutinized in these remarkable works. These works trace the roots of languages derived from the Phoenician alphabet while being based on Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Latin alphabets. However, these installations not only explore the history of language but also question how language has evolved through the ages and led to conflicts among different cultures.
The artist's approach incorporates cross-cultural elements, while the handmade terracotta pieces offer an emotional experience that appeals to visual, auditory, and tactile senses. The bottles represent letters, syllables, or cultural symbols, and they add an extra dimension to the audience through sound art and performances created from the units of the artwork. These works not only provide a visual experience but also engage the audience in an auditory and tactile experience. Audiences can physically interact with these works, which means that the artworks not only captivate the viewer but also stimulate their thoughts and emotions.
The artist's previous works have seamlessly integrated with space and experience, pushing the boundaries of sculpture. These latest works reflect the same creative and innovative approach. While reflecting the linguistic and visual complexity of regions where different cultures converge, these recent works masterfully combine historical and contemporary elements.
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Terranean
2020
Installation (ready made terracotta objects),
400 cm x 60cm x 40cm
‘Terranean’ is a neologism I have created, literally means “related to Terra”. Terra means 'earth' and etymologically coming from the name of Greek goddess of Terra along with Gaia. The both goddess were the source of life and representing the earth themselves and creating the maternal reality of living planet.
The installation is constructed around this ancient holicism. It is consist of found terracotta objects.
Terracotta's raw material clay (2SiO2 with iron component) is one of the fundamental matter of the planet and terracotta means ‘baked earth’, which has a certain irony given the state of climate change and wildfires in the current condition of the mother earth.
The installation can be seen as the artifacts from the future's civilisation as a burned out inorganic planet.
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Flat Earth / W Axis
ÖZGE TOPÇU
11 APRİL - 18 MAY
Pilot is hosting Özge Topçu’s first solo show at the gallery between 11 April and 20 May.
Özge Topçu, at the exhibition “Flat Earth / W Axis”, refers to Rosalind Krauss’ concept sculpture in the expanded field by researching the experiences of the 4th dimension. Along with the form she explores the elements that constitute the environment and social life. The sociological case that inspired the exhibition is the Flat Earth Society which claims that the world is flat with a sensational belief ignoring the last 600 years of history. Artist is trying to understand why this form of belief which corresponds to empiricism and the Middle Ages is popular again.
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Agora
2018
Site-specific installation
Agora is a participatory site-specific installation project. It is inspired by the idea of the marketplace - arguably one of the most organic urban landscapes in history. The project was a part of Art Night London 2018.
The aim was to engage with the local community through a series of workshops in which I asked the participants to come up with designs for alternative public spaces which can be built from one of the key components of the market place – the market box.
After the structure is built we created a conviviality with the participants and have discussions around this new public space, considering its temporality.
The aim of this participation was giving the ownership of the urban landscape back to local residents, to empower the participants and ask them, and the audience, to consider their role in building the urban landscape of the future.
Exhibited in Art Night London 2018, New Covent Garden Market
Supported by SAHA and Faruk Sade Sanat Fonu
http://2018.artnight.london/projects/ozge-topcu/
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Peninsulian,
2017
Site Specific installation (wood, glass, metal)
400 cm x 80 cm x 50 cm
“Peninsulian” is the identity of people who gave Istanbul its visuality. It belongs to the craftspeople and shopkeepers who live in Tahtakale ('wooden castle') neighbourhood. They moved to the historical peninsula a long time ago and grew there; their crafts and marketplace shaping its geography. This is now being destroyed by gentrification. All the objects for this installation were made by these craftspeople and the work is an ironic alternative to new Istanbul under construction.
Exhibited in “Syncronicity” exhibition, Meclisi Mebusan Caddesi 25 No, İstanbul
Exhibited in MAC Belfast Ulster Bank International Art Prize, Belfast/ Northern Ireland
Ömer Ozyürek Collection
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The Presence II
2016
Installation (ready made and painting)
“Presence II” is an attempt to generate insight about object fetishism. In this work, installation is composed as an Architectural model which consisted of everyday objects. The arcitectural model intends to be a representation sample of gigantic urban planning and crazy projects which are belong to star architects. It try to unfold the problem of “construct” notion in that field by setting a playground for kids. And go to show capitalist construction is a game, an exclusively forceful adult game...
Exhibited in "Open City" Exhibition in Pilot Gallery, İstanbul/Turkey
Placed on Ömer Özyürek Collection
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Nature Morte
2016
Installation (Concrete)
In this work, I attempt to analyse modernist and postmodernist visual representations using examples of iconic architectural buildings. In the installation key examples of modernist architecture, “Guggenheim Museum” ( by Lloyd Wright), TV Tower (by Oscar Niemeyer), Buzludzha Communist Party Building (in Bulgaria) loose their own specific idealist statements and contexts and are presented as ancient archeological found objects. They are ordered and presented together to resemble still life objects on a table such as a fruit bowl, candle, flowerpot etc...
Exhibited in "Open City" Exhibition in Pilot Gallery, İstanbul/Turkey
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The Mandalas
2015
Frottaged canvas
Different sizes
This occupation explores different examples of manhole cover as infrascructure of urban (Istanbul) . To scan the textures of covers by frottage method, recorded the memory of urban’s old infrastructure before the Istanbul's totally regeneration. At the end of the proccess, the manhole covers are transformed into canvas' which are located on the wall in the “White Cube” by sublimation.
Selected for “Siemens Borders and Orbits 17” competition
Exhibited in Tütün Deposu, İstanbul / Turkey
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“When it needed to, where were you ?”
2015
Installation (Painting on glass, print on pvc)
The installation presents the apartment name examples on the buildings in Istanbul (Turkey) based on a master sign painter's phrase. Aforementioned Istanbul apartments are in the urban transformation process and will be collapsed and the technique of the golden sign painting is almost extinct. The phrase is belong to a master Armenian sign painter who I met him luckily when I was in my exploring process. These words were spoken to me by an Armenian sign painter and express a sarcastic reproach about disappearing self-identity... Also the mean meets with doom of sign painting technique simultaneously. At the and of the project, I also specified one route to follow the Armenian sign painter's potential route that I couldn't find him again one more unfortunately and invited the participant in the project to seeing his signs in several perspective on the route and feel the both of identities.
Placed on Redbull Art Around 2016, Moda Neighborhood, İstanbul
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Circumambulation
2014
Participated environmental installation (project)
This work which is on the occupation of the city center by the enormous “Double Tree” Hotel located at the seaside of Moda neighbourhood of Kadıkoy, is an environmental installation project aiming to be executed at public area. The environmental installation that will be carried out with participation, includes couple of practices that determine the footprint of the shadow of the building on the city and transforming darkness into white. Some examples of the practices: painting the roads to white, covering the buildings with white fabric, planting white flower etc. With this project an anti-worshipping activity against theinsolent abusive is being planned.
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 "La Turquie Construit" |  “La Turquie Construit” |
 "La Turquie Construit" |  “10 aged regime wine”“ Crops of Republic” |
 “Factory of Modern Republic Sugar”Fine art print on jar |  “ Crops of Republic”Fine art print on can |
 “Obscurantism Halvah”Fine art print on can |  “Modernity Pomade”Fine art print on can |
 “Metamorphose Soap”Package |  “Metamorphose Nervine”Print on jar |
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La Turquie Construit
2013
Installation
In this work, I tried to built a imaginative pavillion of early modernist period of Turkish Republic. I aimed to create playful artefacts of alteration which explore parallels between the morphological properties of modernist architecture and restructuring of Turkish society.
The starting points of these series were the ambivalence of nation identity issue during modernist construction of early Turkish Republic. Images on the objects selected through a thorough / comprehensive scanning of archived publications of 1925-1945’s Turkey. Then these images were transformed into original collages and imitations of advertisement icons on the objects in the appearence of corporate gifts.
Exhibited and selected Mamut Art Project Fairy, İstanbul/Turkey
Placed on Mustafa Taviloglu Collection
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Revetment
2014
Installation
This work consists of two media: A setting on the wall and a book. All the pages recorded the texture of the government building facades’ in Ankara (capital city of Turkey) from the early modernist years in there by frottage method. In this manner, a memory book is formed titled; “Alteration Memory” and tried to turn the facades into new space as a book through the buildings facade. “Revetment” transformed the gallery walls into pages of the book by locating the pages on the wall.
Selected for “New Generation Young Contemporary Artist from Turkey” competition which is organized by Cite de Enternational Paris and Maçka Art Gallery (Finalist work)
Exhibited in Od'A-Ouvroir d'Art, İstanbul/Turkey
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 “Record of Alteration”Özge Topçu, 2014 Ready made, cut out and mixed media on notebook of red tape |
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Alteration Depression
2014
Multiple mixed media
This series covers the early era of the Modernist Turkish Architecture by deformed works on different media. Sometimes the work transforms the examples of the avant-garde architecture of the era to “body without organ” through the concept of “deterritorialization ”. The facades of the buildings, human flesh, and wall are unified on the wall. The black holes – one of the most crucial elements of the work- intend to pierce the wall. The common purpose of the works is revealing the traumatic transformation of the era.
Exhibited in “Second Nature” group exhibition, METU Art 16, Ankara/Turkey
“Dispossession” group exhibition, TUYAP Artist 2014, İstanbul/Turkey
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If There is An Apartment in Kadıköy
2012
Assemblage, ink on paper,
paper cut- out
This artwork that is based on the reflections of the laws of international modernism on Kadıköy, investigates the facades of the early works. It recovers the facades from their regular arrangement and degrades them on a two dimensional plane and unites them in void. The shadows of the images, symbolize the
vagueness as if they imply the modernism’s useless anxiety of representing the rational fact.
Selected for “UPSD Youth Activity 6” compitition
Exhibited in UPSD Exhibition and
Rotary Art Award Exhibition
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Atelienternasyonal
2011
Iron, nickel
Site-spesific installation, İstanbul
“Atolie International” (Atelier Enternasyonal) , is an installation which I composed at my School’s metal studio. This site-specific installation was inspired by the extension idea of Soviet Constructivism. Also, it is a flat adaptation of Tatlin’s Monument to Third International on the studio’s roof construction. The idea is based on the roof’s resemblance to the Monument’s structure. Furthermore, the metal studio’s function is important for the “Constructivist Ideal” as the processed iron was creating a temple for industrial revolution and modernism.
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Leftover
2016
Soap, Cream, Paper
"The artist is transforming wax, flaxoil and paper leftovers which are the rest of her 2 and 3 dimensional self portrait production proces. She is reproducing the same worktable which she used to work on in the Science Center as a demonstrator of chemical experiments during at the beginning of her art career. By repeating the same chemical experiments on her 'artistic worktable' for this exposition, she is trying to include those on her artistic practise. Or she is taking back the remainings of her artistic practise to the science center to create a new alchemy between the artwork, her art practise and herself as an artist."