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Gallery co-founder Yasemin Cengiz Cagatay reflects on  the themes and motifs of  her own work, and the context in which they were made: The works on view are united by Surrealism adopted by both artists. They both employ color emotionally and the artists' works evoke their enduring fascination with color as a reminder of the mystery of perception itself.

In an inventive gestural style, Yasemin Cengiz Cagatay’s works are characterized by their luminous layers of lyrical color. The artist uses color as a means of painting. Exploring the aesthetic possibilities of color and space and their relations, she is obsessed with color. The artist's works can be called painterly investigations into the properties of color. Creating a deep, but ever changing pictorial space of multi-focal character, the artist forces the viewer to readjust his/ her position at every new look. 

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She is interested in powerful images that strike chords embedded deep in the reservoirs of our unconscious. The artist's visual language is also indebted to Abstract Expressionism with its anarchistic understanding of art, irrepressible urge for freedom and gestural and coloristic energy, a mode of expression that remained to this day.The dynamics of her compositions included dramatic movements and dancing rhythms and complex, visually stimulating structures.She created color textures with with an atmospheric overall timbre.In this surreal world, there is a deliberate, non-hierarchical sense of everything existing on the same plane.

YC Cagatay’s paintings resemble modern jazz. Formal links between jazz and abstract expressionism are unmistakable. Jazz music, which typically moves further and further from its  original melody, as it is swept along from one chorus to the next by the frantic  pace and rhythm of free improvisation, accelerating into frenetic sequences of notes, found congenial artistic expression in her early paintings. From an art history perspective, these first works were in the tradition of abstract expressionism and gestural Surrealism. Influenced by the Surrealists, her works featured organic forms with vibrant color accents.

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Yasemin Cengiz Cagatay (@yasemin.c.cagatay on Instagram) grew up in Istanbul with an art teacher mother among paintings and art history books. She learned painting as a child, this leading her to national art prizes - including a first prize in a nation wide art competition when she was a high school senior. She has studied from 11 to 19 years old in Lycée de Galatasaray, a major establishment having formed the politicians and artists of the country. The French influence she received in this centuries old school with a blend of French and Turkish curricula reflects in her paintings. She has  studied at Bosphorus University Business School; which also taught a rich humanities program. The artist pursued a finance management career working as a management committee member for multinational companies, and quit to indulge in her passion for art. She gave herself a tailored art education, living in art centers - Paris, London and New York- and studied contemporary art at the programs of IESA Paris, Sotheby’s Institute of Art London and New York. Cagatay’s yearning to wed the eternal with the coming day, and her devotion to constant questioning pushed her to paint for a long time before exhibiting her work: her preoccupation with analogue and digital painting in relation to representational iconographies spans a decade. She preferred to have her inaugural exhibition with the gallery she co-founded; and starting with All Arts Istanbul fair in 2013, she had exhibited her work both solo or in group at Galeri MCRD and at art fairs, Contemporary Istanbul 2014- 2019- 2021 and Scope NewYork 2020.

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