Güçlü Markalar / Mighty Brands

Please click on the invitation image to visit the exhibition with a virtual tour.

You can also access it at gsfgaleri.mku.edu.tr

Mighty Brands, Personal Virtual Exhibition, Turkey, 14-27 December 2020

Op Art (optical illusions) is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s. With this art movement, the concrete has moved towards abstraction and generally focused on geometric forms. In 1970, a Japanese artist named Shigeo Fukuda made an optical work called "The 100 Smiles of Mona Lisa", abstracting the Mona Lisa, which is known by the whole world, and creating an optical illusion. Here, Fukuda again used lines, black-white colors and negative-positive areas, adhering to the traditions of Op Art. However, the preference of the figure instead of the geometric forms in the study has been effective in the formation of the difference rather than the traditional approach.

After years, the Italian artist named Gianni Sarcone, who used Fukuda's understanding of optical illusion, carried out a work called "The Diva" and processed another iconic name, Marilyn Monroe. The only feature that distinguishes Sarcone from Fukuda is that he used dark blue in the lines and yellow in the background instead of black and white in his work. Apart from the technique, another common aspect of the two artists is that they used iconic names in their works.

Today, when it comes to iconic, brands come to mind, and sometimes their creators can become a brand by getting ahead of the brand. At this point, the artist sets out from today's iconic brands and their founders. He calls his personal exhibition “Strong Brands” because he uses brands and their founders together.

The artist produces works in the context of respect for Fukuda and Sarcone. But he changes the angles and linear values, sometimes he sees people as warriors, he starts from the colors used in the logos as the background color, he also states the names of the founders and the establishment dates of the brands in his works, he makes the logos of the brands or a part of the logos a part of the optical illusion. Thus, he aims to take his work one step further.

Brand Finance's "Top 500 Global Brands of 2020" report, which evaluates and reports the power of thousands of brands every year, is used to identify brands. The brands in the works are (in the order of the 2020 list): Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Huawei, Mercedes-Benz, Disney, WeChat, Shell, Mitsubishi, Porsche, Fedex, Pepsi, Alibaba, KFC, AXA, Tesla, Airbnb, Adobe, eBay, Rolex.