Serkan Özkaya, 1973

Receiving an education in German language and literature as well as in fine art, Serkan Özkaya is known for the witty, playful, and audacious approach that characterizes his work. Through his installations, performances, and sculptures, he instigates intellectual discourses with prominent art institutions across the world to satirize their corporate structure. Through his practice, Özkaya reconsiders concepts such as originality, copy, duplication and appropriation. For example, he once wrote a letter to the Louvre recommending that the Mona Lisa be hung upside-down. On another occasion, he faxed the Philadelphia Museum of Art a warning that one of his friends was planning to take a leak in Duchamp’s urinal on display there.

Özkaya’s work, which he began working on in 2003, by manually copying the first and last pages of Radikal newspaper. This work was followed up with another intervention in 2006, now on the weekend art supplement of New York Times. The news pieces on the left side of the page, which he prepared by hand, shrinks and repeats itself on the right side. Constructed with the Droste Effect – an example of the mise en abyme technique – Özkaya’s work, which was produced with the support of MoMA and MoMA PS1 in New York, examines the issue of what is original and what is a copy, both through the text and page layout.