Untitled, 2016 

Ink pen on paper

65 x 90 cm

Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection

Nonspaces, 2017

Ink pen on paper

100 x 130 cm

Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection

Deniz Aktaş produces paintings employing the techniques of ink pen on paper and digital print collage, and in which he often touches upon urban life through spaces. Working on the memories of spaces, the marks left by humans, or the impermanence of conditions that are built and rebuilt by human hands, Aktaş concentrates on themes of migration and memory, using urban components as his starting point.

In “Nonspaces” series, Deniz Aktaş creates a story-space about the past, using fragments of ruins left after the demolition of a human-made building enveloped by nature. In this series, while Aktaş gives no clues as to the location or the cause of the demolition, he does render visible a kind of mobility that could happen anywhere. The fragments of memory that are forced to change after the raid have merged with nature, showing us the limits of what can be read about transformation, the past, and the future.

In the drawing “Untitled,” where the city and the state of mind of the individual are both reduced to black and white, Aktaş takes the perspective from a room in shambles, with a window opening, containing only a chair discarded by the homeowners, toward apartment buildings where even greater destruction has taken place.