Jump Cut 1 (signboard)

A 'jump cut' is a film transition between two shots of the same subject, taken from a static camera position, that produces the effect of jumping forwards in time. It is often used to achieve uniform pacing in a film, bringing slow moving processes up to speed with the rest of the action; Leyla Gediz uses the term here as a means to consider the contemporising agendas of Turkish modernisation.

Nylon stockings drying on a washing line are painted on one side of 'Jump Cut 1 (signboard)', the abstract lines on the reverse adopting the colours of its clothes pegs. In 'Jump Cut 2 (couch)', the artist’s shirts, leggings and undergarments are laid out on a couch, forming a casual inventory. Gediz describes her graphic realism as bearing a 'childlike simplicity,' an aesthetic evidenced in the artist's earlier smoothly-stylized figurative and floral paintings produced in-situ and from photographs. Gediz extends this stylistic signature as she creates expanded paintings that project the colours and forms present in the series' first two images into three-dimensional space. In 'Jump Cut 3 (frame)' the painted surface is almost entirely cut away, leaving only traces of abstract lines at the edges of the canvas. In 'Jump Cut 6 (space invader)' and 'Jump Cut 7 (cutie)', canvas sections have been cut out of a stretched canvas and reattached to its surface, while 'Jump Cut 8 (plinth)' displays ink-jet print offcuts and sections of canvas left over from the production process.

In 2012 Gediz painted an image of a folding screen, titling it 'Private.' First employed as a structural platform directly after the Gezi Park protests, this icon of modesty and discretion was a stylisation of police and protestor barricades mobilized in the streets. In 'Jump Cut 4 (folding screen)', the neatly hand-lettered text ‘disko istanbul' is joined by an abstract colour study and an image of a houseplant whose leaves have been coloured bright red.

'Jump Cut 5 (back2back)' is a banner backdrop in which the tiled logo is replaced by a hand drawn illustration. The image shows a visibly distressed and burqa-clad piano player whose frown brings a sobering tone to this ordinarily glamorous commercial format. The opposite side of the printed canvas shows the faded image of what might be either fireworks or warning flares ignited in mid-air. In this work - as in the installation as a whole - borders between public and private and new and old become hazy, abstract semiotic compositions within Gediz's immaculate formalism.

Leyla Gediz (b. 1974, Istanbul) is an artist living and working in Istanbul. She received her MA in Visual Arts from Goldsmiths College, London and her BA in Fine Art from Slade School of Fine Art, London, and also completed an Erasmus Exchange at Städelschule, Frankfurt. Selected solo exhibitions include Topağacı Ihlamur Yolu, Istanbul, 2014; Kulüp Külah, Istanbul, 2012; Rampa, Istanbul, 2011; Kaapelin Galleria, HIAP, Helsinki, 2010. Recent group shows include Salt Beyoğlu, Istanbul, 2015; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Freiburg, 2015; Depo, Istanbul, 2014; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, 2014; Nesrin Esirtgen Collection, Istanbul, 2014; Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Istanbul, 2011; Saatchi Gallery, London, 2011. Gediz also curated exhibitions at Pilot Gallery & Co-PILOT, Istanbul, 2014 and Nişantaşı, Istanbul, 2012, among others.