Her practice, which navigates between visual arts and literature embraces an experimental and poetic approach. How objects become bodies and spaces to dwell in is a theme that developed in her work throughout years. Gül uses a wide pallette of organic and inorganic materials to their extremes, experimenting how materials come together and manifest a presence. Milk, plaster, acid, oil, water, rice, sugar, wood, glass, metal are some of these materials Gül choses to use. Centers and peripheries, bodies and identities, history and memory, life and death, language and archetypes, rituals and metaphors, such are the relations Deniz Gül dissects meticulously. Following a similar thread in literature, Gül arrives at an in between zone of “unlearning”, a zone that is not dominated by meaning, but by all means open to an emergence of experience, of possibilities.
The singularity of her practice lies partially in the thread she deploys in her works. Her exhibitions are parts of an ongoing thinking that takes shape in each project and are in dialogues with each other.
Loyelow, her latest solo show which took place at the Pill in 2016, follows the lead of a multi-phased project initiated by the artist in 2011 with her text “5 Person Bufet”. 5 Person Bufet was curated by Emre Baykal in Arter, Istanbul in 2011 and was completed as a collaborative performance in Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, in 2015.
Deniz Gül’s latest works were reproduced in the context of 13. Sharjah Biennial (2017). In 2015, she was invited to do a site-specific installation in a rundown Greek apartment in Beyoğlu for the 14. Istanbul Biennial. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions in institutions including Salzburger Kunstverein (Salzburg), the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw), Palais des Beaux Arts, (Lille), Centre De Cultura Contemporania (Barcelona). She was the recipient of ArtsLink Award by CECArtsLink (NY) in 2014 and accomplished her project with the support of SAHA Foundation in Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, 2015) where she was invited to do a residency.
