Astronomy Picture of the Day

Yagiz Özgen | Solo Exhibition

Presented by SANATORIUM

Opening May 18th: 6 - 8 pm

SANATORIUM is pleased to present Yağız Özgen’s first solo exhibition in the USA, titled Astronomy Picture Of The Day, between May 18 - June 25, 2023, at DIANA NEW YORK. The exhibition presents Özgen’s art practice as a performative installation, dealing with the complex relationships between objects and symbols with the dimension of time.

For his first solo exhibition in New York, Özgen draws from an online archive titled "Astronomy Picture of the Day", which contains information about celestial bodies and events. Named after the online archive created by professional astronomers, the exhibition includes a single installation that presents Özgen’s approach to art in its most general form. This installation consists of a triptych painting done according to the structure of the exhibition space, labeled bags of paint that corresponding to the exact color areas in the painting, performative drawings depicting the stages of the act of painting, instructions to follow in order to paint, and units of measurement used to relate all these different objects.

The artist reconstructs Astronomy Picture Of The Day as an installation and a specific atmosphere spreading throughout the space with these objects that emerge during the act of picturing, depicting Özgen’s artistic approach as an outline. The exhibition can be visited between May 18 - June 25, 2023, from Thursday to Sunday, 12:00-6:00 pm.

About the artist: 

Born in Istanbul in 1987, Yağız Özgen was admitted to the Painting Department of Marmara University’s Fine Arts Faculty in 2005 and graduated in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree. The same year, he started the master’s program and graduated in 2012 with the dissertation entitled “New Technology and the Aesthetics of Digital Representation: Chris Cunningham”. The artist completed  his Proficiency in Art (PhD) program at Marmara University Painting Department and continues to teach theoretical courses at this university. Özgen has held four solo exhibitions entitled “C://Still_Life”, “Spectrum”, “Metadata” and ''Instructions'', respectively, since his bachelor’s degree. His works were part of important group exhibitions such as “Systems/Visibility”, "aRb", “Hypologie” and “28th Contemporary Artists Exhibition”. He took part in the artist residency programs of Borusan Contemporary in 2011 and 2013 and of Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf in 2018. Since 2011 the artist has been participating in the Conceptual Art Events of the Definition of Art Group and continues his artistic activities and theoretical studies in Istanbul.