DAVID SALLE’S FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION IN ISTANBUL “UN-ACCOMPANIED MINORS”
29 MAY- 25 JULY 2024
AT SEVIL DOLMACI ISTANBUL

Villa Ipranosyan, Beşiktaş – Istanbul

Sevil Dolmacı Istanbul is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of the internationally renowned American artist David Salle in Turkey. The exhibition, entitled ‘Un-Accompanied Minors’, will run from 29 May to 25 July 2024, and will present 21 new works created by Salle this year at his studio in New York. These will include new paintings from the artist’s celebrated Tree of Life series, the brand-new Window series as well as a diverse range of works in various media and sizes. (this is all correct)

David Salle [b. 1952] is a contemporary American painter, printmaker, photographer, stage designer, and essayist. His work first came to public attention in New York City in the early 80’s, alongside a generation of painters working in a new expressionist mode, including Eric Fischl and Julian Schnabel. Nevertheless, he is also associated with the more theory-oriented Pictures Generation artists, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, and Richard Prince, who rethink mass- media imagery and advertisements throughout their practices. For Salle, as with poetry, painting creates meaning by the counterbalancing of contrasting elements.

“Ever since I started painting,” the artist has explained, “I have tried to get the fluidity and surprise of the image connection and the simultaneity of film montage into painting.” Salle’s paintings contain certain sylistic allusions to Pop Art, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. They are distinguished by their large scale and enigmatic compositions, as well as by their juxtaposition of contrasting moods, sources, and most importantly, styles of painting. His imagery spans advertising art and illustration, cartoon imagery from the 50’s and 60’s, as well as wide swaths of art history. Salle’s paintings comprise a heterogeneous assemblage of images, some of which are juxtaposed in a seemingly un-affiliated, or simply surprising way, while others are placed on top of one another in a manner that deliberately defies everyday logic. Salle engages with images, and the style in which they appear, as an influence on our collective consciousness and on our own perception of self. Formally, his compositions create a path for the eye to take in its journey through the painting; attentive viewers engage with the paintings on an emotional, intellectual, as well as psychological level.

In the past, Salle’s creative process often began with photography. He took photographs of, for instance, hired models as reference material, a practice that was both pioneering and controversial at the time. This was primarily due to the rarity of combining these two artistic disciplines. In Salle’s own words, his intention is to frustrate any ‘normative’ narrative associations, although stories will always be present in any combination of images. Salle’s decision-making process begins with an image he is drawn to, to which he continues to add elements from his vast image lexicon until the painting feels complete. Although Salle’s works do not contain a literal narrative, they are not devoid of meaning or relationships. The images selected by Salle are not arbitrary; rather, they are related to each other in complex, intuitive ways. Salle believes that originality resides in what one chooses, and in how one deploys it . It is the “what” combined with the “how”.

During the 2020-21 pandemic, Salle created a series of works entitled ‘Tree of Life’, which reference Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and The New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno (1904- 1968).

Canvases alternate between a monochromatic black and white palette and a polychromatic one. The art enthusiasts in Istanbul will have the opportunity to view the artist’s latest, and final, additions to the renowned Tree of Life series.

David Salle’s solo exhibition “Un-Accompanied Minors” will be on display at Sevil Dolmacı Istanbul from 29 May to 25 July 2024.