The Gallery at the Marmara - Manhattan is pleased to announce an extraordinary exhibition of sculptures by American artist Barbara Browner Schiller and photographs by Turkish artists Ekmel Ertan and Murat Germen.
This new body of work is inspired by Alice in Wonderland, capturing the moment when Alice touches the magic ladder that takes her on a visual journey of "telescoping" 360-degrees panoramic photographs of Istanbul-Whirlingland.
Barbara sees her role as being able to sense and mirror needs and feelings which she can then transcribe into her art to evoke similar responses in the viewer. Some of the themes found in her work include those of mothers, fathers and their children. It is at those moments that Barbara conveys those related feelings of love, happiness or elation into her work for the benefit of the viewer.
The universality, timelessness and continuity of the family, its unity and expressiveness form the core meaning of her work, which is formed from the raw materials of clay, wax, stone and eventually becoming embodied into a sculpture the color of the earth.
What is left out in photographs often speaks as strongly as what you see. In their work, Ekmel Ertan and Murat Germen strived to document Istanbul as a whole with its unending vibrant life and not be limited by the individual components that constitute this whole. They found that the 360-degree angle panoramic photography was the best medium for conveying their art.
Istanbul is a city that forces you to live in its own certain way and to follow its own rules. The resulting photographs depict the richness of daily life of Whirlingland and can be seen as a natural collage.
These photographs were taken as separate images with a compact digital camera and then combined as a collage using a computer. The distorted perception obtained after the digital process is a pure optical effect and does not involve any digital manipulation.
Upon graduating from college, Barbara Browner Schiller studied sculpture at the New School for Social Research-Parson School of Design under the tutelage of Manolo Pasqual, Martin Holiday and Phillip Listengart . Since winning her first award while in high school, Barbara has exhibited her works and won awards from many places including the Hechscher Museum, Knickerbocker Artists of New York at the Salmagundi Club, The New England Exhibition at The Silvermine Guild Center and Katonah Museum, as well as numerous galleries.
Ekmel Ertan received his B.S. Degree in Electronics / Communications Engineering at the Technical University of Istanbul. Ekmel currently teaches Multimedia / Visual Communication Design at Istanbul Bilgi University. His photography has been exhibited at La MaMa Gallery in New York.
Murat Germen was educated as city planner at Technical University of Istanbul and as an architect at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He works as a professor of Photography and Visual Communication Design at Sabanci University in Istanbul. Also conducts his own business doing mostly professional freelance photography. He has had many articles and photo Series published on the subjects of Architecture / Photography / Art / Digital Design and has spoken about these subjects at numerous seminars. Has opened over 10 exhibitions so far and currently writes periodically as an editor for a digital photography magazine named Digital Photoline.
