ARTANKARA 2026

DG Art Gallery & Project Participates in ArtAnkara 12th International Contemporary Art Fair with Kadir Akyol and Erkut Terliksiz

Istanbul-based DG Art Gallery & Project is participating in ArtAnkara’s 12th International Contemporary Art Fair, one of Turkey’s prestigious art events, with artists Kadir Akyol and Erkut Terliksiz.
The fair, which will take place between March 25-29, 2026, will welcome art lovers at the ATO Congresium in Ankara.

The selection includes works from Kadir Akyol’s “SAKURA & INCEPTION: Memory of Transience” series, which he developed on patterned fabric surfaces and reinterprets cultural figures.
The exhibition space is designed with a spatial unity through wallpaper designed by Minimal Contract.

Erkut Terliksiz’s work, “WHAT WILL WE DO WITH THIS HEART NOW?”, which centers on a grotesque and narrative style, is also featured. In addition to the works titled, two iconic skateboards designed within the scope of The Skateroom x Erkut Terliksiz project, a collaboration between DG Art Gallery & Project and The Skateroom’s first collaboration with a Turkish artist, will also be on display for the audience during the fair.

All works can be viewed at the gallery’s stand number 3 in the Foyer during the fair.

KADIR AKYOL
SAKURA & INCEPTION: Memory of Ephemerality

Kadir Akyol’s artistic practice brings together Eastern and Western aesthetic traditions within a multilayered visual language, constructing a liminal space where time, memory, and identity intersect through the themes of Sakura and Inception. The symbolic vocabulary of Sakura—evoking transience, transformation, and renewal—merges with the serenity of porcelain-like surfaces, dissolving fixed representations of the figure. In parallel, the notion of “Inception” disengages the portrait from linear temporality, allowing past, present, and future to coexist and accumulate within a single pictorial plane. In this context, the human face emerges as both a carrier of cultural memory and a reflection of contemporary visual consciousness. Akyol’s works thus establish a field oscillating between dream and reality, inviting the viewer into an ongoing process of perceptual, psychological, and existential transformation.

Wallpaper design: Minimal Contract

ERKUT TERLİKSİZ

WHAT ARE WE TO DO WITH THIS HEART NOW?

Erkut Terliksiz’s practice unfolds through an intuitive and unrestrained visual language, where the act of drawing becomes a site of discovery rather than execution. He rejects the conventions of proportion, perspective, and fixed representation, allowing his figures to emerge through distortion, expansion, and transformation beyond familiar bodily limits.

In this fluid terrain, the figure is no longer a stable form but a carrier of affect. Exaggerated features, extended limbs, and shifting anatomies function not merely as stylistic gestures, but as direct manifestations of emotional intensity and internal movement. Each figure appears suspended between states, unfinished yet complete, fragile yet insistent.

The title What Are We to Do with This Heart Now? points to the core impulse within Terliksiz’s work, an immediate and unmediated confrontation with feeling. Painting, for the artist, is not a premeditated structure but an unfolding process. It begins with a gesture and evolves through a series of intuitive decisions. Each mark redirects the narrative. Each intervention alters the emotional trajectory of the work.

There is no fixed plan, no hierarchy, and no stable endpoint. Instead, Terliksiz constructs a visual field governed by spontaneity, where meaning is not imposed but emerges through accumulation and tension.

The viewer is not positioned as an external observer but is drawn into this unstable space. The rhythmic interplay of line and color, combined with the expressive force of the figures, generates a heightened sensory and emotional experience. Feelings such as anxiety, excitement, vulnerability, and curiosity coexist and resist resolution.

Terliksiz’s works operate within this threshold between control and surrender, structure and collapse, image and sensation. What unfolds is not merely a composition but an encounter that insists on presence, immediacy, and the unresolved question the title leaves behind.

ABOUT KADİR AKYOL

Born in 1984, Kadir Akyol is an artist who blends traditional portrait art with contemporary collage aesthetics and pop-culture elements, exploring the theme of cultural hybridity. He brings together historical figures and modern icons on the same plane, creating a colorful bridge between the classical aesthetics of the past and the speed of the present. Through rich patterns and layered structures, he uses a dynamic language that invites the viewer to discover the surprising meanings behind familiar faces. Maintaining an active artistic life between Istanbul and Spain, Akyol has recently been focusing on new media projects that combine digital art and classical painting. He successfully continues his artistic life with dynamic exhibition projects that question issues of identity and representation from a global perspective.

ABOUT ERKUT TERLİKSİZ

Born in Adana in 1978, Erkut Terliksiz graduated from the Graphic Design Department of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and has emerged as one of the original names in contemporary figurative expression with his painting-centered production. After his undergraduate education, TERLİKSİZ continued his life and work in Istanbul; he participated in numerous group exhibitions in countries such as Australia, England, Spain and Germany. In addition to many group exhibitions, the artist, who has also held solo exhibitions, has had his works featured in magazines and books such as “Juxtapoz”, “Pictoplasma”, “Fresh / 3” and “Atlas of Illustration”.

ABOUT DG ART GALLERY & PROJECT

DG Art Gallery & Project was shaped by the vision and passion of its founder, Dursun Gündoğdu. Having developed a deep understanding of the art world since 1990, Gündoğdu, who began his journey with antique dealing, ultimately took his passion for art a step further by establishing DG Art Gallery & Project.

Embracing the belief that “art is for everyone,” Gündoğdu aims to ensure that art reaches a wide audience. Today, DG Art Gallery & Project offers art consultancy and sales services on a global scale, hosting works by renowned artists from Asia to America.

DG Art Gallery & Project ARTANKARA Selection
Exhibition Dates: March 25 – 29, 2026
Opening: March 25, 2026, Wednesday
Location: ATO Congresium / Stand Foyer 3