Collect Gallery Opens the Season with Richard Bartle’s “Steppingstones”

Collect Gallery opens the new season with English artist Richard Bartle’s solo exhibition “Steppingstones”. Bringing three series consisting of the artist’s recent period work, the exhibition will be on view from September 14th to October 10th, 2022, at Collect Gallery’s venues in Tophane and Juma. Bartle’s macro and micro scale paintings, sculptures and installations, the foundations of which the artist built onto philological, historical, and cultural research going back 18 years, is combined here with his overcoming the tension arising from his encounters with İstanbul’s enchanting and astonishing urban fabric.

The artist’s works, inspired by scenes he came across while running along the man-made rocky shore in Kadıköy, tell not only the stories of his own journey and of the rocks themselves, but also those of the locals who occupy those spaces, the traces of which are found between these rocks and cracks, or through the citizens’ dissenting interventions in the form of graffiti on the surfaces of these rocks.

The main concept behind Bartle’s large-scale installations – which were inspired by his experiences living and working in İstanbul, as well as the works of miniature painters in the Ottoman and Persian imperial courts – focuses on the methods and styles on miniature artists, and the unique limitations and hierarchies within the crafts workshops of the period. The works themselves use İstanbul’s landscape and architecture as their source material, referencing the city’s fabric, street art, and folk narratives. They take the audience along for a gripping and sincere journey through the streets of İstanbul while taking in the sights along the city and the shore through various points of view.

The debris that the artist collects during his walks in the city each carry the potential to become a piece of art, the process of discovering, documenting, and ruminating about which becomes the context that constitutes each work.  Observations about İstanbul, the streets, characters, and encounters make up the focal point of the series. The artist seeks at the root of each work the historicity between the city’s layers as he strolls along the surface in an instinctual act tied to the materialism of the urban environment – setting out with his found objects, their associations, and the narrative possibilities of simulacra.

September 14th to October 10th, 2022

Visiting Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 11:00 – 18:00

Address:
Collect Gallery / Tophane: Hacımimi, Karabaş Cd. No:2/3, 34425 Beyoğlu/İstanbul, Turkey
Collect Gallery / Juma: Kemankeş Karamustafa Paşa, Mumhane Cd. No:50, Beyoğlu/İstanbul
 
Contact:
0530 519 91 22
https://collect-gallery.com
info@collect-gallery.com

Film by Yavuz Inam.

© Richard Bartle, all rights reserved.