Can Altay

Can Altay (1975, TR) has been addressing cohabitation through his investigations and propositions on the politics of everyday life, public space, urban ecologies, objects of use, and artistic action for over two decades. Incorporating narrative devices and spatial instruments, he produces “settings” that open themselves to common use and act as sites of collective production. His investigations appear, at times as complex document based installations, and as sculptural and image-based work that result from a process of distillation and abstraction. His public projects include: open recording studio spaces MÇPS (Istanbul, 2017); “Loughborough Records Present Presence” (Loughborough, 2016); usable sculptures and networked objects “Inner Space Station” (New York, 2013); “Distributed” (London, 2012); and critical emancipatory propositions on existing formats as in “The Church Street Partners’ Gazette” (London, 2010-13) and “PARK: bir ihtimal” (Istanbul, 2010). Altay’s works have been exhibited at institutions such as Walker Art Center, PS1 MoMA, Hessel Museum of Art Bard College, ZKM, MAXXI, Artists Space, Van Abbe Museum, SALT; with solo shows in London, Berlin, Rome, Istanbul, Bolzano, Utrecht, Bristol. Can Altay participated twice in the Istanbul Biennial. Other biennials his work was shown include Havana, Busan, Gwangju, Marrakech, Yinchuan, Çanakkale, Taipei, and Thessaloniki. Altay’s works are included in public collections such as VanAbbe Museum (Eindhoven), ARTER-VKV (Istanbul). His solo exhibiton “Split Horizon” took place at Öktem Aykut in 2015 and his second solo show “Skein of Waterfowl” took place in 2023. He was part of the group exhibition “Backstage Engelberg” in 2024. He also runs the podcast ‘Ahali Conversations with Can Altay’. His research was published in periodicals such as Architectural Design, Design & Culture, Digital Creativity and the Journal of Architectural Education; and in books published by MIT Press, Routledge, Sternberg, among others. Reviews on Altay’s artworks appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, Frieze, Mousse, domus, Art Papers, Ocula, and more.