Gallery Siyah Beyaz Ankara | 20 February – 28 March 2026
“The body is our general medium for having a world.”
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1945)
The Memory of Balance takes as its point of departure the fleeting harmony Günnur Özsoy establishes between sky and water while wake foiling. Here, balance is not a fixed state; it is a relationship continuously renegotiated by the body with the wave, the wind, and gravity. This fragile alliance is translated into the material presence of the sculptures in the series.
In the exhibition, each form occupies a position that determines the possibility of another. Weights touch one another through invisible lines; boundaries are slowly reshaped through contact and withdrawal. Balance is less a display of mastery than a state of awareness that also carries within it the possibility of falling.
By recalling the body’s temporary alliance with water, The Memory of Balance approaches balance as both a corporeal and an ethical field of responsibility. Its ethical dimension lies in not limiting balance to the individual’s adjustment of their own weight; for every bodily positioning inevitably touches the space, rhythm, or fragility of another being. As in the relationship formed with water, balance becomes possible only through mutual attentiveness, measure, and the will to withdraw.
This delicate state between remaining upright and letting go becomes the very memory the exhibition carries—much like the artist’s first intuitive encounter with water. Balance, here, does not appear as a moment confined to the past, but as a contemporary reminder that calls to be reconsidered today.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1945)
The Memory of Balance takes as its point of departure the fleeting harmony Günnur Özsoy establishes between sky and water while wake foiling. Here, balance is not a fixed state; it is a relationship continuously renegotiated by the body with the wave, the wind, and gravity. This fragile alliance is translated into the material presence of the sculptures in the series.
In the exhibition, each form occupies a position that determines the possibility of another. Weights touch one another through invisible lines; boundaries are slowly reshaped through contact and withdrawal. Balance is less a display of mastery than a state of awareness that also carries within it the possibility of falling.
By recalling the body’s temporary alliance with water, The Memory of Balance approaches balance as both a corporeal and an ethical field of responsibility. Its ethical dimension lies in not limiting balance to the individual’s adjustment of their own weight; for every bodily positioning inevitably touches the space, rhythm, or fragility of another being. As in the relationship formed with water, balance becomes possible only through mutual attentiveness, measure, and the will to withdraw.
This delicate state between remaining upright and letting go becomes the very memory the exhibition carries—much like the artist’s first intuitive encounter with water. Balance, here, does not appear as a moment confined to the past, but as a contemporary reminder that calls to be reconsidered today.