Lot 26: - Mehmet Guleryuz , B. 1938 Crated Monkey wood, white cast polyester and paint

signed and dated 2007 wood, white cast polyester and paint

measurements note 220 by 170 by 120cm.; 86 5/8 by 67 7/8 by 47 1/4 in.

Istanbul, Yapi Kredi Kazim Taskent Sanat Galerisi, Mehmet Guleryuz, Oradan Oraya, From Somewhere to Somewhere Else, 2007-08, pp. 6 & 40-43, illustrated in colour

Nan Freeman, Mehmet Guleryuz, Istanbul 2008, p. 299, illustrated in colour

Collection of the Artist

Mehmet Guleryuz is widely considered one of the leading lights of the Turkish modernist movement. Beginning his training in Istanbul under Zeki Faik Izer, whose work is also featured in this sale, lot 61, he later moved to Paris where he engaged with the contemporary art scene of the 1970s. At this time the conceptual movement was in full swing, a movement that emphasised the artistic idea over and above the representation of the object or indeed the object itself. Guleryuz believed that he had a profound responsibility to comment on the social and political conditions of his time. This belief in the artist's role as activist took on greater proportions as he lived through the deterioration of the Vietnamese peace talks in the early 1970s, the general social unrest in Europe and watched from afar as yet another coup d'état took place in his homeland on the 12υth of March in 1971. With the innate sensitivities of the artist, Guleryuz observed and analyzed the pressures of his existence at this time of flux, and expressed it through his art and sculpture. In this iconic representation of a deformed and crated monkey, Guleryuz expresses notions of hopelessness and subjugation with a touching sensitivity and tenderness. The first Crated Monkey was conceived in 1974, as Guleryuz, strolling along Marché Daguerre, was inspired by something as mundane as a packing crate. In time the artist developed the crate into a prison, trapping a grotesque papier mâché monkey within it. In the time-honoured fashion of symbolically replacing man with beast, the artist criticizes the suppression and restraint of an intrusive political system. The sculpture is a powerful protest. This original Crated Monkey was destroyed, to be re-conceived by the artist on a monumental scale in 2007. Touched by the current global political situation, Mehmet Guleryuz felt compelled to revive the concept and the protest. On the one hand intimidating, on the other unbelievably poignant with its four-fingered right hand, missing legs and slumped shoulders, the monkey simultaneously inspires both awe and melancholy. Monstrous in size, volume and appearance, the new Crated Monkey never fails to shock, and remains a powerful tribute to the suppressed and the ostracised. The Crated Monkey is one of Mehmet Guleryuz's most iconic sculptures, combining his political stance and conceptual drive with his skills as an artist.