AHMET DOĞU İPEK (B. 1983)

Inspired by the Japanese tradition of kintsugi, Ahmet Doğu İpek’s Repair series is motivated by acts of repairing and healing. Collecting stones and pebbles as they begin to crumble and disintegrate, İpek enlarges these seemingly insignificant objects to a grand scale in vast, intricately detailed watercolour paintings, suspending them against white space. Upon close inspection, cracks and crevices in the stone reveal the artist’s transformative intervention—trails of glittering gold powder appear to stitch the vast, levitating form together. These golden seams echo the kintsugi repair method, which sees broken pottery mended using lacquer mixed with powdered gold. These visible traces of repair are treated as part of the object’s history, rather than something to be concealed. İpek's precise rendition of every crease and wrinkle in the stone alludes to the vast geological time scale over which it has been formed, transformed, and now repaired with the precious metal that ultimately materialised from the very same earth. Repair (L) celebrates the coincidences that have brought the materials together, and the crucial yet unpredictable factors that have played a role in the final formation of these natural resources.

Ahmet Doğu İpek was born in Adıyaman, Turkey in 1983 and lives and works in Istanbul. His current solo exhibition A Halo of Blackness Upon Our Heads at Arter, Istanbul, continues until 2023 and features works from his Repair series as well as paintings, drawings, installations and video works inspired by natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions, landslides and solar eclipses. Recent group exhibitions include Odunpazarı Modern Museum, Eskişehir, 2020; Abdülmecid Efendi Köşkü, Istanbul, 2019; Neues Museum Nürnberg, Nuremberg, 2018 and ArtScience Museum, Singapore, 2015.