Look Mom, I Made A Landscape Painting (Solo)
Atelier Marvy, İzmir, Turkey
19 July - 19 August 2024

In Look Mom, I Made a Landscape Painting, Esra Gülmen playfully reimagines what a landscape can be—using language as both material and metaphor. The centerpiece of the exhibition shares the same title: Look Mom, I Made a Landscape Painting, Clouds / Rivers / Trees / Waves / Mountains / Sun / Wind (2024), a modular installation of wall-mounted, powder-coated stainless steel works. Each element is a word—transformed into sculptural signage—that collectively assembles into a landscape not constructed through traditional imagery, but through signs, forms, rhythm, and language.

Continuing the ideas first explored in earlier pieces like Mountains, Trees, Rivers, Clouds, Waves (2021) and Rrrrivers (2021), Gülmen transforms language into visual terrain. Brightly colored words become both representation and abstraction: Wwwaves, Mmmountains, Sssun—playful distortions of text that visually echo the shapes they describe. Together, they form a landscape painting that is not painted at all, but built from the tension between the seen and the said.

In addition to this central installation, the exhibition includes a series of mirror works and unique works on paper that shift focus to questions of human conditions, body perception, and societal ideals. Here, Gülmen interrogates the visual clichés and norms we’ve internalized—particularly around identity and the body—breaking them down through her distinct use of language, humor, and form.

Look mom, I made a landscape painting,
Clouds / Rivers / Trees / Waves / Mountains / Sun / Wind, 2024
Powder-coated stainless steel
Format variable
3 +1 AP