Kadir Ablak

Fairs;

2025 –11th Art Ankara Art Fair / Biriz Art Project Stand, ANKARA
2024 –10th Art Ankara Art Fair / Biriz Art Project Stand, ANKARA
2024 - Mersin Art Fair / Art Sentez Art Gallery Stand, MERSİN
2024 - IAAF Art Fair / Biriz Art Project Stand, ISTANBUL
2024 –1st Artnova Art Fair / Biriz Art Project Stand, ANKARA
2024 –2nd Bodrum Art Fair / Biriz Art Project Stand, Bodrum MUGLA
2023 – Turkish World Painters Meeting Art Festival / Tashkent UZBEKISTAN
2023 - IAAF Art Fair / Biriz Art Project Stand, ISTANBUL
2023 –1st Bodrum Art Fair / Biriz Art Project Stand, Bodrum MUGLA
2023 –9th Art Ankara Art Fair / Biriz Art Project Stand, ANKARA
2022 - IAAF Art Fair / Biriz Art Project Stand, ISTANBUL
2022 - Artcontact Art Fair / Cadde160 Art Gallery Stand, ISTANBUL
2021 - IAAF Art Fair / Cadde160 Art Gallery Stand, ISTANBUL
2021 - 7th Art Ankara Art Fair / Arda Art Gallery Stand, ANKARA
2020 - 6th Art Ankara Art Fair / Arda Art Gallery Stand, ANKARA
2019 - 2019 Russian-Turkish Year of Culture “History Reflected in Water” International Painting Exhibition / St. PETERSBURG and ISTANBUL
2019 - 29th Istanbul TÜYAP Art Fair / I AM BORN Art Platform, ISTANBUL
2019 - World Art Day Events 2019, İZMİR
2019 - Euro Expo Art 2019 / Neoart Art Gallery Stand, FORLİ - ITALY
2019 - 5th Art Ankara Art Fair / Arda Art Gallery Stand, ANKARA
2018 - 28th Istanbul TÜYAP Art Fair / I AM BORN Art Platform, ISTANBUL
2018 - Art Shoping Paris Carrausel Du Louvre / ACT Stand, PARIS - FRANCE
2018 - 3rd International Tourism Fair / Arda Art Gallery Stand, ANKARA
2018 - 4th Art Ankara Art Fair / Arda Art Gallery Stand, ANKARA
2017 - 3rd Art Ankara Art Fair / Arda Art Gallery Stand, ANKARA
2015 - 25th Istanbul TÜYAP Art Fair / I AM BORN Art Platform, ISTANBUL
2014 - 24th Istanbul TÜYAP Art Fair / I AM BORN Art Platform, ISTANBUL
2013 - 23rd Istanbul TÜYAP Art Fair / I AM BORN Art Platform, ISTANBUL
2012 - 22nd Istanbul TÜYAP Art Fair / I AM BORN Art Platform, ISTANBUL
2011 - 21st Istanbul TÜYAP Art Fair / I AM BORN Art Platform, ISTANBUL
2011 - 11th ANKART Art Fair / Aysel Gözübüyük Art House, ANKARA
2010 - 20th Istanbul TÜYAP Art Fair / I AM BORN Art Platform, ISTANBUL
2009 - 19th Istanbul TÜYAP Art Fair / I AM BORN Art Platform, ISTANBUL
2009 - 2nd International Turkish Festival Turkish Mythology Exhibition / A.Ü. G.S.F. Gallery, ERZURUM
2008 - 18th Istanbul Art TÜYAP Fair / I AM BORN Art Platform, ISTANBUL
2008 - 6th Gyumri Biennial / GUMRU - ARMENIA

Mixed Events;
The artist has participated in over 200 national and international mixed exhibitions, including competitive exhibitions, between 1998 and 2025.

Awards;
2010 - Nuri İyem Painting Competition / Evin Art Gallery, ISTANBUL
2010 - 10th Şefik BURSALI Painting Competition / D.G.S. Gallery, ANKARA
2010 - 70th State Painting and Sculpture Competition, ANKARA
2009 - Istanbul, the City of Civilizations Painting Competition, ISTANBUL
2009 - 9th Şefik BURSALI Painting Competition / D.G.S. Gallery, ANKARA
2009 - 69th State Painting and Sculpture Competition, ANKARA
2008 - Turkish Naval Forces Command 10th Traditional Painting Competition, ISTANBUL
2007 - Wall Paintings Competition, ISTANBUL
2006 - Beyaz Ay Association for the Visually Impaired, ISTANBUL

Art Perspective;
Music, poetry and nature have been the main factors that have illuminated and guided my entire life and artistic adventure. Everything that contains sincerity and heartfeltness is my source of inspiration. I cannot feel like I belong to anything that I have not experienced or felt physically or sensually. I cannot convey an emotion or thought that I have not felt to my paintings.
“A work that is distant from its own social values ​​and realities is devoid of sincerity and heartfeltness” according to me.

There is no inanimate being, there is an insensitive person. On the contrary, the only thing that is dead is insensitivity. Everything/object that we come into contact with our senses becomes us, and we become that ‘thing’. It carries our memory, and we carry its memory.’ Even though the geographies I have lived in have changed over the years, this idea of ​​mine has never changed and became clear with the following sentence in the manifesto of my works called ‘Anatomy of a Metropolis’.

“In spaces; like humans, it breathes, cries, gets sad, rejoices, falls in love and dies when the time comes, in my world.”

I build my paintings on these basic thoughts and feelings. I do not include anything in my paintings that I have not experienced and do not believe has experienced. There is no place for the dead in my paintings. There are only images that pretend to be dead. I ignore and push them aside while painting. This is what brings me closer to the descriptive realism that preceded me and what separates me.

The socio-political, socio-cultural and economic turmoil of the 1940s-1960s, the human-based lifestyles in rural areas and small settlements have been the subject of Turkish painting, and works have been created by referring to humans, labor and cultural values. During this period, humans have been at the center of painting.

In the age we are in, people have begun to migrate in droves to larger and more crowded settlements ‘for various reasons’, and the world has begun to be reshaped. Despite our physical distances in the countryside, our sensory closeness has been turned upside down with these new and mega-scale lifestyles. Despite our physical closeness, our social relations have been reduced to a minimum, and our sensory closeness has gradually decreased.
Because; each of us brings our own cultural and sociological truths from the geographies we come from. This situation leads to multiculturalism in cities. We face a new norm that is open to conflict and chaos. This brings with it concerns about security and anxiety. Instincts such as anxiety, ostentation and being stronger against the other bring with them new structures and rules.
In my opinion, these new lifestyles are grinding down our human aspects and we are turning into voluntary prisoners of a mechanical, planned plot and game. We are producing new concepts such as apartment, plaza, shopping mall. We are destroying greenery and nature, and we are content with the tiny natures we grow in our balconies and pots in apartment buildings and plazas. With technology, both we and our living spaces are getting dirty and transforming. We produce new items, from solar energy panels to satellites, from antennas to cables, from air conditioning engines to natural gas meters. I compare our living spaces to a mentally unstable uncle on Istiklal Street, who has dozens of medals and various accessories on him.

I am an art worker who is local enough to admire its country, culture and nature, and universal enough to embrace all of humanity. I witness the characteristics, longings, pains, joys, lifestyles and worldviews of the society I am a part of. I do not think that it is sincere for me to produce works that go beyond what I see and witness. I believe that any kind of affectation and plagiarism in an intellectual and plastic sense is the greatest harm an artist can do to himself. First of all, you and I are both human and share the same destinies in the same geography. Just as we have common pains and common joys, we also learn to live with each other in this megacity within the framework of tolerance and understanding with our different thoughts. While we all breathe in the musty smell of the old building in Kasımpaşa, we all endure the frightening and condescending images of the high-rise glass and metal skyscrapers in Levent. While the transformation of Hagia Sophia from a museum to a place of worship has created conflict environments brought about by our ideological and religious differences, we can unite as all of humanity in our fight against the Covid-19 disease. Even though we have different cultures, customs, traditions, beliefs/disbeliefs, ideologies, social lives and statuses, we are human beings with our beauties, ugliness, anger, fears, concerns, loves, hatreds, compassions, tolerances and intolerances. The subjects, colors, textures, light, perspectives, etc. that I prefer, all serve this purpose by preserving their human dimensions and truth, with a critical language. That is why they touch our emotions and create a sense of belonging. My paintings remind us of all our human values ​​and characteristics, our past, our memories, and what we go through every day but fail to notice. They have a conscious approach, while reminding us of the past, they make us question the future. While presenting two different lifestyles together, I make my choice and highlight it with an illusion. The ‘human’ subconscious cannot escape the reality and longing of this illusion, no matter how the future takes shape. This is why they touch our emotions and create a sense of belonging with their color, texture and spirit. Only the dead, the ‘insensitive’ cannot benefit from this!