Evren Tekinoktay was born in 1972, Copenhagen, Denmark.
She graduated from Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, Holland (BA), Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, Holland (MA), and The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Her work is originated in collage. She uses found imagery and familiar visual tropes to explore the body and its desire as a currency that can be consumed, reproduced and exchanged in the form of images.
Across her work in a variety of media, a retro sensibility of feminine craft, the domestic or decorative, meets a knowing feminist undertone. The artist’s kinetic sculptures of spinning shapes and colorful neon lights, low-tech video animations of magazine cut-outs, and satin quilts mounted on porthole mirrors share the same handmade aesthetic. Her paper collages and paintings are disarming images that mix naive child-like markings with a gritty sophistication: ranging from erotic to cartoonish, folksy and glam.
A nostalgic mood of camp theatricality recurs in the work: be it a cowboy boot painted in an op art pattern, the ‘moving collages’ reminiscent of fairground rides or flashing advertisements, or the images of wigged women in drag from 80s magazines that appear in the artist’s films. This language of words, patterns and symbolic imagery so rich in texture and stimulus, speaks also of the melancholy tristesse that overcomes the theatre when the lights go out after the show.
She lives and works in Copenhagen.
THE TRIUMPH OF PAINTING, Saatchi Gallery (London),
MONOMYTHOLOGY- The Hole (New-York), ULALUME- The Approach Gallery (London), LOTUS- Pilevneli Gallery (Istanbul),
SOMEDAY A REAL RAIN WILL COME AND WASH ALL THE SCUM OFF THE STREETS- Nordic Contemporary (Paris),
SERPENTINE- The Approach (London), IF 6 WAS 9- Collaborations (Copenhagen),
NEON- THE CHARGED LINE- Grundy Art Gallery (Blackpool- UK), BERMUDA- David Risley Gallery (Copenhagen),
BACKGROUND/FOREGROUND- Galerie Nordenhake (Stockholm), MOON SKIN LUCID WALK- Den Frie (Copenhagen),
PURPLE HEAD- Galerist (Istanbul), U- Imo projects (Copenhagen), SUCK- Galerist (Istanbul),
A SLIGHTLY PREGNANT MAN- The Approach Gallery (London), ROOMING IN- Patricia Low Gallery (Gstaad),
NATION- Frankfurter Kunstverrein (Frankfurt), VINTERMUSIK- Collaborations (Copenhagen),
THERE ONCE WAS A WOMAN WHO PUT HER HEAD INTO AN OVEN, Galerie Zwinger (Berlin),
MOTH- Collaborations (Copenhagen), MOTH II- The Approach (London),
TIL VÆGS- Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), NYT LYS- Sophienholm Kunsthal (Kgs. Lyngby -DK)