Yannick Chayer + Erkut Terliksiz

Double solo | Yannick Chayer + Erkut Terliksiz
Dates : March 3 to April 2, 2022

A double solo exhibition splits the gallery into two distinct, yet not contradictory, worlds.

When we first encounter the work of Montreal artist Yannick Chayer (Quebec, Canada), we’re confronted with abstract forms that coexist with the figurative in scenes that are both free and pictorial. Chayer is interested in experimental music and his art, similarly, is casual and does not rely on any pre-established narrative. This is how he develops a language free of rigid formulas and infused with personal references. His universe is enigmatic, if not mystical. The quest of his work is to transcend mass culture while questioning the possibility of another form of existence. The symbols that we discover in his works are chosen according to the meaning that they evoke in him in the moment. The three-dimensionality in the mediums he uses supports the marginal and liberated aspect of his approach.

When we then encounter the work of Erkut Terliksiz, Turkish painter and designer (Istanbul, Turkey), we recognize in his paintings, always audacious and whimsical, a staging of characters with deconstructed faces and oversized eyes. Drawing from the world of vintage comics and from the multitude of cubist viewpoints, Terliksiz immerses us in paintings reminiscent of intimate tales. Both his work and his creative process translate into an exploratory mode inspired by the fragility of our existence.

Yannick Chayer and Erkut Terliksiz undeniably share elements of an analogous aestheticism. C.O.A is thus transformed, for the duration of their double solo, into a space of manifestation as much in terms of the emotions it generates, as in the atmosphere reminiscent of the stupefying apparitions that emerge from it.