Showing her work for the first time in Helsinki at HIAP’s Cable Gallery, Istanbul-based artist Leyla Gediz (b. 1974) detects similarities between making art and the constant wrapping and unwrapping of the city and its products. Gediz’s exhibition runs June 3 through June 20, while on Monday, June 7 at 5 pm the curator and critic Adnan Yıldız from Berlin will be in Helsinki for a public discussion with the painter at the Cable Gallery.

Leyla Gediz has always worked within the wide field of painting. Her new exhibition too, is an extension of that field. For Leyla, painting is a bearer of concepts. It is not so much about the artist’s brushstroke as it is about its intrinsic social values. It is a response to relevant issues of the day, and our everyday life. In this case, her exhibition at the Cable Gallery reflects on the three months she has spent in Helsinki. In this work, she attempts to shift the emphasis from ’painting as a product’ to ’painting as a performance’, in which the transient moments of production become more important than the glossy product.