Sarp Kerem Yavuz: Glorious Century

Anna Laudel presents Glorious Century by the award-winning visual artist Sarp Kerem Yavuz between September 22–November 5, 2023.

Yavuz’s Glorious Century explores the themes of orientalism, homoerotica, politics, religion, and violence through film-based, digital, and AI-generated photographs of the male form. The exhibition contains the artist’s works from 2010 to the present, spanning 14 years of his life.

Spanning two storeys of the Anna Laudel Gallery, visitors can anticipate encountering the artist’s newest body of AI-generated photographs, which were created with a custom AI engine that references his decade-long photography practice, titled WET_DREAMS on the ground floor. The referenced images occupy the second floor of the exhibition offering an extensive insight into the artist´s photographic journey.

WET_DREAMS
Sarp Kerem Yavuz presents his cutting-edge photographic collection, WET_DREAMS, created using the generative AI engine Layer.ai. Incorporating a handful of reference images by Peter Hujar, Ara Güler, Robert Mapplethorpe, along with his previous works, the artist constructed his ideal dataset for Layer.ai to generate from. The selection offers a striking, sensual exploration of damp male forms that blend into architectural details of Turkish bath interiors, whilst flames, steam, and wisps of smoke defy the rules of physics to complete the beautiful and surreal portraits. 

Photographic retrospective of Yavuz
The second part of the exhibition, displayed on the second floor of the gallery, is a survey of photographs taken by Yavuz since 2010. The collection serves as the foundational content used by Layer.ai to create the artworks presented in the WET_DREAMS, therefore providing a unique opportunity to witness the production process of AI-driven imagery, with two distinct yet interconnected collections.

Sarp Kerem Yavuz’s solo exhibition Glorious Century  delves into the profound interplay between artistry, identity, and the boundless potential of the digital realm. Blurring the lines between self-expression and technological interpretation, the exhibition can be visited from September 22 until November 5, 2023 at Anna Laudel Istanbul. 

Sarp Kerem Yavuz
Through photography, light projection, and digital art, Sarp Kerem Yavuz creates visually provocative works of art in pursuit of peaceful coexistence. Born in Paris in 1991 and raised in Istanbul, his works explore gender, politics, religion, and violence. He is the recipient of several international accolades. In 2013, he became the youngest artist to exhibit and be included in the permanent collection of the Istanbul Modern Museum. His artworks are published in Turkey: Istanbul CODEX, and the Boys! book benefitting the Elton John AIDS Foundation. His artworks are included in The Luciano Benetton Collection as part of Imago Mundi, the JPMorgan Chase Collection, and the permanent collections of the CICA Museum in South Korea, the Norton Museum in Florida, the Allen Memorial Art Museum and the Transformer Station in Ohio, the Polaroid (Impossible Project) Collection in Berlin, the Soho House Collection in Istanbul and New York, and The Marmara Hotel Collection in New York. He has participated in over 40 exhibitions. He lives and works between New York and Istanbul.