OVERWORKED: Çağla Ulusoy

This artist’s book features a selection of Çağla Ulusoy’s abstract paintings distinguished by her unique visual language and colour palette, accompanied by collages that reflect the processes behind her practice. In her paintings, Ulusoy reshapes lived experiences from various cultures and traditions through an abstract visual language, infusing them with subconscious memories and imagery. Her collages, on the other hand, re-imagine her works within a hybrid narrative and fantastical universe, incorporating adorned figures and scenes. Comprising 83 selected paintings — which Ulusoy creates with materials such as acrylic, oil paint, sand, and wax and in which harmony and friction coexist on the same surface and the balance between colour and form is constantly challenged — and the collages accompanying them, the book deciphers the artist’s multilayered and uncanny visual language.

Çağla Ulusoy (b. 1989, Istanbul, Turkey) moved to New York in 2013 to take courses at the Art Students League of New York. There, she met American artist Pat Lipsky, one of the pioneering artists in the Colour Field movement in New York, who mentored her for two years. She had the opportunity to learn and work under her guidance, which allowed her to develop her technique. In 2018, she completed her Master’s degree in the Painting Department at the Royal College of Art, London. Ulusoy’s first solo exhibition, SANDYMANSIONAL was held at Dirimart Pera in 2023. Among the group exhibitions are in Le citron est la fleur la plus sincere (curated byYvannoé Kruger), Galerie Les filles du calvaire, Paris (2023); Şey: nesnenin ihtimali, Odeabank, İstanbul (2020); LovelyHeavyLovelyH..., Biscuit Factory, London (2019); Salad Days (online exhibition), Young Space (2019); Layover, Versus Art Project, Istanbul (2018); Mantra, StourSpace, London (2018); Royal College of Art Degree Show, London (2018); Thumbnails, Hockney Gallery, London (2018); Red Dot Annual Exhibition, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, New York (2016) and BHQFU Brucennial, New York (2014). Çağla Ulusoy lives and works in Istanbul.