Art On Istanbul is an Istanbul-based contemporary art gallery founded in 2011 by collectors Oktay Duran and Nil Duran. Since its establishment, the gallery has hosted solo exhibitions by significant national and international artists, while also maintaining a strong commitment to supporting emerging practices. Alongside its exhibition program, Art On Istanbul actively participates in major art fairs in Türkiye and abroad, and currently represents nearly twenty artists.
Art On Istanbul presents a curated solo photographic presentation by internationally acclaimed Turkish filmmaker Zeki Demirkubuz (b. 1964) at Photo London, marking both the artist’s first participation in an international photography art fair and the gallery’s focused engagement with his photographic practice on a global platform.
Best known for his uncompromising auteur cinema — with films premiering at the Venice Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard) — Demirkubuz extends his rigorous, human-centred vision into photography. His images resist spectacle and narrative construction, favouring instead a direct, unmediated gaze that foregrounds presence, vulnerability, and psychological intensity.
The presentation brings together a new and previously unseen selection of photographs taken across Europe, America, and Asia, capturing individuals encountered in everyday contexts. Eschewing overt direction or dramatization, Demirkubuz allows each subject to exist autonomously within the frame. The resulting images carry the tension of cinematic stills — not as fragments of a story, but as self-contained moments shaped by attention, silence, and atmosphere.
Rather than storytelling, these works concentrate on the immediacy of the human condition. Time appears suspended; gestures are minimal; expressions are neither posed nor explained. What emerges is a quiet but emotionally charged encounter, where the subject’s sheer existence becomes the core of the image.
With this presentation, Art On Istanbul positions Demirkubuz’s photographic work within the wider discourse of contemporary photography and visual art, introducing an international audience to a lesser-known yet conceptually consistent extension of his artistic practice. The booth underscores the gallery’s ongoing commitment to presenting cross-disciplinary artists and expanding the boundaries between cinema, photography, and contemporary art.
