Project #03In Dialogue: Aret Gıcır & Stijn Ank
Clubhouse Hosts Öktem Aykut
Aret Gıcır, Stijn Ank
August 7 - October 4, 2026
The exhibition brings together works by Aret Gıcır and Stijn Ank across the interior and garden of Clubhouse. Works from two of Gıcır’s abstract painting series are presented indoors, while Ank’s plaster sculptures inhabit the garden.
Aret Gıcır’s Before Leaving series, consisting of 16 canvases produced between 2023 and 2026, is presented together in its entirety for the first time at Clubhouse. Stijn Ank’s plaster sculptures, which continue to transform through their exposure to the open air, are brought together in an outdoor setting in Istanbul for the first time.
Stijn Ank (*1977) works intuitively, creating molds from different materials that delineate specific spatial boundaries. Into these molds, he pours liquid plaster, a substance derived from seawater salts and mixed with natural pigments sourced from minerals. As the plaster sets, it undergoes a crystallization process reminiscent of coral growth, capturing a tension between fluidity and solidity. Once released from their molds, Ank’s sculptures become meditations on the fragile beauty of existence, bearing witness to cycles of materiality, space, light, and time.
Institutional solo exhibitions include IMMA, Dublin (2025); Kunsthaus Lempertz, Brussels (2024); Le Musée du Louvre, Paris (2022); Academia Belgica, Rome (2020); Club Solo & Van Abbemuseum, Breda (2019); Bastide Projects, Marseille (2018); MoCA Museum, Taipei (2017); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2017); Forum d’Art Contemporain, Luxembourg (2014); and S.M.A.K., Ghent (2012). Ank’s solo exhibition Desire took place at Öktem Aykut in 2022. The artist lives and works in Ghent.
Aret Gıcır (*1978) studied painting at the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 2008. His painterly language has a heavy yet ephemeral quality that points to subtle ambiguities across personal, societal, and historical narratives. Gıcır works predominantly through thematic series of abstract paintings. Each work is built through layers of tonalities and refractions of light and darkness; deliberate brushstrokes fold into one another, creating contrasts and depths reminiscent of fleeting shadows. While each painting stands as an autonomous entity, it acquires new meanings through its relationship with neighboring works, continuously redefining the whole.
Gıcır has held four solo exhibitions with Öktem Aykut and has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Turkey. He lives and works in Istanbul and Boston.
