Istanbul-based gallery Dirimart announces that its new gallery space in the heart of London’s Mayfair district will open on 9 September 2025 with the inaugural exhibition I still insist, a presentation by Ayşe Erkmen, one of Turkey’s foremost contemporary artists. The opening of the new London gallery marks Dirimart’s first international gallery expansion. This prime location in Mayfair, renowned for its rich concentration of globally acclaimed art galleries, places Dirimart at the centre of London’s dynamic art scene.
Levent Özmen, Senior Director of Dirimart, comments: “Dirimart’s aim has always been to create cross-geographical dialogues, not only by showing the first shows in Istanbul of internationally recognised artists such as Shirin Neshat, Sarah Morris, Candida Höfer, and Hermann Nitsch, but also in creating a truly inclusive and international platform bringing the work of leading artists from Turkey to a global audience and reaching beyond geographical boundaries. We’re delighted to be inaugurating our new Mayfair gallery with a solo show by Ayşe Erkmen, one of Turkey’s most celebrated artists, whose sculptural interventions and installations make subtle commentary on issues such as mobility and social divides that are central to our times.”
Running from 9 September – 4 October 2025, I still insist is Erkmen’s first solo exhibition in the UK since her solo show at the Barbican in 2013, and brings together seven new and recent works, many of which are conceived in response to Dirimart’s new London space. Marking a significant moment in the gallery’s international trajectory, the exhibition explores both the physical move and the conceptual shift involved in entering a new cultural context. The works featured explore the experience of transitioning between spaces and the need to reorient oneself within unfamiliar environments and in front of new audiences.
In her practice, Ayşe Erkmen takes the physical environment of the exhibition space as a point of departure. Each time Erkmen exhibits in a white-cube gallery, she confronts the fact that such spaces are predominantly designed to flatter paintings – posing unique challenges for any conceptual artist. Rather than resisting this reality, she instrumentalises the space as a material itself – a silent, structural collaborator. By repositioning existing architectural structures in her own distinctive style, Erkmen prompts viewers to reflect on the gallery space itself. The contemporaneity of her work lies in its ability to reveal what already exists, encouraging audiences to see the space anew through subtle shifts in form and context. Discussing her practice, Erkmen explains, “I want everything I do to be considered sculpture”. However, her practice is not defined by a search for specific materials or forms. Instead, it evolves in direct response to the spaces she engages with as, she notes, “I feel most successful when I bring as little as possible to the space”. For Erkmen, the exhibition space becomes both subject and medium, shaped by its social history and architectural character.
The titular work, I still insist (2025), is an installation relocating the wooden structure once hidden behind the plaster walls of Dirimart’s Istanbul gallery into its new London space. These wall pieces – constructional elements once used to support displayed artworks – are transformed by Erkmen into the artworks themselves. Furthermore, referencing the gallery’s broader role in both influencing and being influenced by its surroundings, Erkmen presents Dolapdere (2017), a sound piece that faintly voices the names of the businesses around the gallery’s Istanbul space that have been displaced and transformed due to ongoing gentrification. This work is accompanied by Dolapdere, the movie (2025), a new short film that visually traces those same streets, revisiting the original setting of both the installation I still insist (2025) and the sound work Dolapdere (2017). This gesture of remembering is echoed in Scrolling (2021), a video piece in which Erkmen scrolls through her digital archive of past works on a computer screen, as though preparing the ground for something new to emerge.
In the exhibition, Erkmen also reprises one of her signature gestures in Ribbons (2025), wrapping an existing column in the gallery space with fabric ribbons inscribed with her name. In homage to her grandmother, a tailor, this gesture bridges the practices of garment making and sculpture. At the same time, it raises questions about the implications of the artist’s name becoming ubiquitous – once the symbol of authorship, now potentially diluted through repetition.
At the entrance of the gallery, the silver works, Circles on Circles (2025) depict Erkmen’s fascination with the material through a series of various sculptural forms. In her ceramic series, Weight to Form (2025), Erkmen engages with the medium by bypassing traditional steps in ceramic making and focusing instead on the initial gestural marks made in a ceramic studio.
In I still insist, Erkmen brings together works that interrogate the sculptural object through unconventional means, taking into account the architectural and environmental context of Dirimart’s new setting in London. In doing so, she invites reflection on the role of the gallery – both architecturally and socially – within its wider context.
The exhibition will also be accompanied by a new publication of Ayşe Erkmen’s unrealised works, which will be launched this September.
Press release from Dirimart
Image: Ayşe Erkmen. Circles on Circles III. 2025. 21 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Dirimart
