Yasam Sasmazer - Illuminated darkness

Artnesia is proud to present Illuminated Darkness, the first solo exhibition in the UK of the Turkish artist Yasam Sasmazer at the Aubin Gallery, London. 

Working in hand carved Linden wood and bronze, Sasmazer creates life-sized figures of children to explore many issues and concepts - all evocative of the raging emotions and naive lusts of adolescence and young adulthood. The figures are often seen to be occupied in different ways: imitating their parents, being cheeky, dressing up, and even eating some sort of blood-coloured forbidden fruit.

In Illuminated Darkness, Sasmazer addresses certain feelings that are not inherently part of the human conscience but can turn into a waking dream, a nightmare or a frightening shadow. Shadows often have the power to dominate humans even if they are unaware of them and in Sasmazer’s world, these shadows created out of the reflections of light through her wooden characters allow her to discuss the unknown, primitive, uncontrolled, dark and unresolved subliminal feelings of children.

According to the artist, shadows represent the darkness in our souls' hidden side and the most frightening part of our personality. She follows Carl Gustav Jung's footsteps and says that The shadow is everything you are but do not want to be.

The work Dark Threat features a half asleep boy who is confronted by the daunting shadow of himself wearing a hoodie. The awakening light, a positive element by itself, becomes a frightening tool. Furthermore, in Shooter, we see a child trying to shoot the light, which he sees as the cause of his own darkness. The reflection of the light through the sculpture is, in fact, the child’s own shadow. By attempting to shoot it, he really becomes a target of himself.

Yasam Sasmazer was born in Istanbul in 1980. She studied in the workshop of Professor Rahmi Aksungur and graduated from the Sculpture department in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University in 2003. She completed her Master’s degree at her alma mater in 2006. She has had several solo exhibitions and has participated in many group exhibitions in Turkey, Europe and the USA including the exhibition Confessions of Dangerous Minds: Contemporary Art from Turkey at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2011. Sasmazer’s two most recent solo shows are It’s so complicated, at Berlin Art Projects (2010), and Strangely Familiar, at the Cagla Cabaoglu Gallery in Istanbul (2010). Her work is featured on the cover of Unleashed, Thames and Hudson, 2010.  Sasmazer, whose works are also included in public institutions and prominent private collections in the Middle East and Europe, lives and works in Istanbul.