Antonio Cosentino

In Antonio Cosentino’s works, one finds a wealth of images distilled from everyday life, the depths of personal, memory, and the visual culture of the artist’s city. While the shifting character of highbrow and low-brow art was being discussed in the 90’s contemporary art milieus, Cosentino and his artist friends undertook, as it were, the archaeology of a gaze which brought subculture into question. It is from this period on that Cosentino’s painting incorporated materials from the visual culture of our geography without letting one dominate the others: panels, signboards, wrappings and ceramic tiles. The artist’s images embrace an expression that is dislocated and fragmentary, but also somehow holistic and repetitive, thereby breaking open a third window: a mnemonic space that is at once colorful and meditative… While his memory constantly operates like an archivist, the artist documents all sorts of written and visual data. Cosentino’s mobile and ludic setup once again reminds us of the typical obliviousness of modernity, by suggesting concepts such as the fleetingness of megacities and urban architecture, the loss of human scale and localness, the superhuman speed and even consumption.

Antonio Cosentino graduated from the Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University in 1994. He founded the art initiative Hafriyat with Hakan Gürsoytrak and Mustafa Pancar in 1996. Having participated in numerous exhibitions both in Turkey and abroad, Cosentino contributed works to Spare Time, Great Work (Platform 3, Munich, Germany, 2011), and Tactics of Invisibility (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; Tanas, Berlin, Germany; ARTER, Istanbul, Turkey 2010-2011) with the collective Hafriyat. The artist lives and works in Istanbul.

CV

EDUCATION

Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, Mimar Sinan University, İstanbul / Turkey

EXHIBITIONS

2018: Summer was a Beautiful Day, Zilberman Gallery, Berlin / Germany
2018: School Square Galatasaray (curator: Çelenk Bafra), Pera Museum, Istanbul / Turkey
2018: HOME IS WHERE THE (HE)ART IS, Galerie Paris-Beijing, Paris / France
2017: Kyiv Biennial – The Kyiv International, State Scientific and Technical Library of Ukraine, Kyiv / Ukraine
2017: HARBOR, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul / Turkey
2016: boxes of cigarettes and whisky all over the sea, ferâre, my love, Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul / Turkey
2015: Istanbul, Passion, Joy, Fury (curators: Hou Hanru, Ceren Erdem, Elena Motisi and Donatella Saroli), MAXXI National 21st Century Arts Museum, Rome / Italy
2015: Mom I’m Going Out to Pour Some Concrete, with Extrastruggle, Studio-X, Istanbul / Turkey
2015: Escape from Marmara Sea: The Stelyanos Hrisopulos, Salt Ulus, Ankara / Turkey
2013: Departure Marmara Sea, Bergsen & Bergsen, Istanbul / Turkey
2013: Tin City, Külah, Istanbul / Turkey
2011: Zaman Tüneli, Gallery Kullukcu, Munich / Germany