Ambidextrous Group Show 5

Alp Erdem Öz

Born in 1988 in Istanbul, Turkey, Alp Erdem Öz earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013, followed by an MFA from Pratt Institute. By the use of different paint applications, various speeds and compositional breaks as means of expression, Öz sets up conditions for a narrative. His attempt is to make a painting that is in the state of becoming. He refers to a collection of photographs and found imagery before making any moves. In this sense, all paintings start as representational, but as soon as he starts painting he puts the source aside. The process becomes reactionary. Rags, stencils, squeegee, sanding paper and his hands are as valid tools as brushes and palette knives.

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Andreas Sell

In recent years, Andreas Sell’s work has focused on artistic group work and the creation of space for group work. Since 2020, he has been running the artist residency Hermitage Sykaminea (HS) on the island of Lesvos in Greece. As part of the HS, he has organised a number of collective projects. These include the Hermitage Sykaminea – Gathering in 2022 at the AiR Onassis and the Ergo Collective in Athens. With the HS programme, Sell is building a network of creative workers and new local and international projects with a focus on ecology and social participation on the island of Lesvos.

His practice spans artist books—published with Bom Dia Books, Dolce Publishing, and independently—and installations exhibited at institutions including Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Karlin Studios, Haus der Kunst, and Brooklyn Lyceum. He has been awarded scholarships from DAAD, Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the Berlin Senate. Sell has participated in residencies such as A.I.R. Futura Prague and USF Verftet Bergen. He studied at Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee and completed an MFA at Pratt Institute.

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Ayda Demirci

Ayda Demirci is a painter based in Istanbul. Her practice is shaped by her view of painting as a continuous process of research and discovery. She works to create abstract compositions in her paintings. Her focus is always on painting; she is interested in constructing images and expressions independent of an idea or narrative. Demirci’s paintings are exactly ‘what you see’. Ambidexter has presented her two solo exhibitions, 35 Paintings and Two.

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Charlie Stein

Charlie Stein explores dominant cultural aesthetics, questioning modes of perception in a highly digitized and visually overstimulated world. Her multidisciplinary practice spans drawing, painting, sculpture, and text, with a focus on social structures, digital media, and contemporary communication aesthetics.

Currently a guest professor for painting and drawing at HfBK Hamburg, Stein has also lectured at the Pratt Institute in New York, UdK Berlin, and CalArts in Los Angeles. She studied fine arts with Christian Jankowski, and holds graduate degrees in political science, sociology, linguistics, and English literature.

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David Doğan Levi

As a multidisciplinary artist, he graduated from Plastic Arts at Paul Valery University in Montpellier, France, in 2016. During his university years, his fascination with the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and art led him to explore innovative painting techniques using self-made brushes and tools. Back in Istanbul, his homeland, in his studio, he maintains a steadfast focus on painting organic forms and incorporating photography. His work defies easy categorization, residing in the realm between abstract and figurative, as he continues to push the boundaries of artistic expression.

The repetition of the technique he used while preparing this body of work led him to discover new methods, using tools and materials he created himself. In his studio, he remains deeply focused on painting organic forms and producing expressive mono prints. His work resists easy categorization, existing somewhere between abstraction and figuration, as he continues to challenge the limits of artistic expression.

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Ece Özel

Born and raised in Istanbul, Ece Özel studied painting at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. She worked as a fashion stylist for nearly fifteen years and continues to perform as an active DJ around the world.

Her work explores the dynamics between the human body and fragments of life, searching for points where personal memories meet subtle, ambient memory. She is interested in how these traces shape our sense of presence and identity.

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Fırat İtmeç

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Gala Bell

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Gaspar Martinez

Gaspar Martinez (b. 1982) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He received education and worked in Argentina. In addition to Argentina, he has participated in numerous solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, and art fairs internationally in various European countries and the United States. He has held solo exhibitions at the Cosmocosa Gallery in Buenos Aires and the Argentine Consulate. His works have also been exhibited at El Mirador in Buenos Aires; Charles Banks Gallery in New York; Centotto Gallery in New York; BOS Gallery in Dublin; Bow Industrial Park in London; and Ambidexter Gallery in Istanbul. Martinez currently lives and works in London, United Kingdom.

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Hilmi Can Özdemir

Hilmi Can Özdemir (b. 1995, Eskişehir) takes the visual language of old analog photographs as his starting point in his painting practice. He reassembles collages created by bringing together different photographs through his own aesthetic sensibility, thereby constructing a reality that is authentic yet fictional. The oil paint he uses on large canvases transcends the documentary nature of photography, lending a theatrical depth to the painting. Özdemir’s approach is far from hyperrealism, but is based on a pictorial language that preserves the emotional intensity of realism. The artist’s works depart from the universality of art; they invite conceptual inferences through indirect symbols and staging. Objects and figures offer clues that invite the viewer’s own interpretation rather than a direct message. In Özdemir’s paintings, light evokes the dramatic effect of photography, while the freshness of colors and the constructed nature of the scenes create a timeless atmosphere.

After graduating from Eskişehir Fine Arts High School, the artist graduated from the Painting Department of Anadolu University Faculty of Fine Arts in 2018 and opened his first solo exhibition, “Paradoxia,” at Ambidexter Gallery in 2023. Özdemir, who has participated in various group exhibitions, continues his work in his studio in Eskişehir. He is represented by Ambidexter Gallery at exhibitions in Turkey and internationally.

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Huseyin Varaha

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Mark Hale

Mark Hale was born in Izmir in 1984, studied Printmaking and Graphic Design at Anadolu University, and participated in international exchange programs at Accademia di Belle Arti di Palermo and San Diego State University. He completed his master’s in Animation and Illustration at Prague Academy of Architecture, Art & Design. He has been living in Istanbul since 2012.

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Murat Burhanoğlu

Murat Burhanoğlu, born in Istanbul and based in Amsterdam, is a painter whose practice revolves around monochromatic landscapes and the gestures of entities and animals that inhabit our world. His visual language draws on archaic rawness, ruins, and palaces. Artist’s first solo exhibition, Black Sun (2019), and his second, Order of the House (2023), were both within Ambidexter Gallery. His paintings are featured annually at major art fairs such as Contemporary Istanbul, and he has participated in group exhibitions in Istanbul, Izmir and Chios, Greece.

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Oğulcan Kuş

Oğulcan Kuş (1993) is an Istanbul-based artist and graduate of Marymount Manhattan College with a degree in Studio Arts and Communications. Having immersed himself in the New York art scene for six years, working with institutions such as MoMA PS1, Oğulcan’s artistic exploration primarily revolves around geometric precision, and cartoon-like fgures, especially hands adorned with white gloves. Inspired by his experience as an art handler, these gloves have evolved into dynamic elements, adding an intriguing layer of mystery and symbolism to his work. Recently, Kuş has been experimenting with expanding his practice into the third dimension through manipulation of canvases and introducing new materials like wood. His art is a captivating blend of tradition and innovation, rigidity and whimsy, inviting viewers into a world of perpetual exploration.

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Oğulcan Sürmeli

Oğulcan Sürmeli (b. 1995) graduated with honors from Işık University’s Department of Plastic Arts in 2018. In the same year, he participated in the Akbank Contemporary Artists Prize Exhibition and was featured in the Honor Graduates Exhibition of the Turkish Council of Fine Arts Faculties. As an artist who experiments with guerrilla art methods in public spaces, he aims to break thought patterns embedded in collective memory and the discourses that reinforce them through irony.

Sürmeli conceived his art as an inner realm of thought where honesty is liberated from constraints.

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Pınar Kayar

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Sedat Ayhan

Sedat Ayhan (İzmir, 1987) graduated from Dokuz Eylül University, Faculty of Fine Arts. Inspired by history and combining the tradition of multi-figure painting with the basiccomponents of abstraction, the artist aims to create new perceptual problems about the visible by challenging the possibilities of figurative form. Compositions shaped by instinctive gestures and unplanned shaping constitute the artist’s production practice.

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Selin Uyar

Selin Uyar (b. 1997, Bursa) is an abstract expressionist painter working primarily in oil on canvas. A graduate of Central Saint Martins, her work focuses on movement, transformation, and the structural possibilities of gestural abstraction. Through layered brushstrokes and shifts in composition, she explores the relationship between form, space, and material.

Her paintings emphasize the physicality of paint and process, incorporating simple yet undefinable marks that create a dynamic interplay between control and spontaneity. The use of diaristic titles introduces a textual element, adding context without imposing fixed interpretations.

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Selver Yıldırım

Selver Yıldırım (1993) is an artist based in Istanbul. Her multi-layered practice spans painting, digital media, textiles, and found objects, rooted not merely in visual aesthetics but in a political question: What is reality, and for whom does it hold true?

Yıldırım’s work navigates themes such as simulation, memory, the politics of desire, and the representation of the body. She builds a language that oscillates between pop culture and critical theory, working both conceptually and intuitively. She distorts the familiar, rendering the everyday grotesque.
Her work is marked by inner contradictions: it is at once heavy and light, transparent and dense, personal and structural. Defining herself as a “painting laborer,” she approaches production as a form of embodied labor.
Technically, she primarily works with hyperrealistic acrylic painting, while also producing digital collages, video works, and airbrush pieces on textile surfaces. Her engagement with surfaces goes beyond traditional canvases, often incorporating industrial materials such as metal, fabric, and plastic.
Her interdisciplinary approach is shaped by a queer-feminist perspective; rather than aestheticizing images, she aims to expose them—less to narrate than to leak.

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Simla İçeli

Simla İçeli was born in Adana, in 2000. She studied Painting and Visual Arts at NABA, Milan. She briefly did an internship as a cultural mediator at Triennale Museum. She participated in various exhibitions such as the graduation show at Otto Zoo, Rea Fair at Fabbrica del Vapore, Troubled Waters by Rea Fair, Ambidextrous Group Show, Istanbul. She then completed a residency; Uncool Artist, New York. She currently works and lives in Istanbul.

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Sinan Saül

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Tarık Töre

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Vincent Krüger

Vincent Krüger lives and works in Cologne (Germany). He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. Krüger engages with different materials and pursues diverse interests that sometimes overlap and connect, but at other times are far removed from each other. The process of his own work is at the core of his practice and is continuously questioned.

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Yona Kohen

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