Once in 40 Years: 1

Galeri Nev İstanbul presents Once in 40 Years: 1, a two-person exhibition of Mike Berg and Nermin Er, from 2 October to 14 November 2026. It opens an 18-month series marking the gallery's 40th anniversary, held in its space on İstiklal Caddesi in Beyoğlu. Berg shows iron sculptures, some standing on the floor and some hung on the wall, built from open frames and lines. Er shows works in cut, layered and coloured paper, some with watercolour and watercolour pencil.

The pairing rests on how each artist builds a work. Both take cues from the cities where they live, from architecture and from what surrounds them. Each assembles separate parts into a new structure, at scales running from a single sheet of paper to iron pieces more than two metres wide.

Berg starts from three basic solids, the sphere, the prism and the pyramid, and redraws them as spirals and lines of metal. On the wall, his sculptures can read like patterns fixed to the surface. Pyramid: How did we Get Here (2024) and New Life for Pyramid (2026) both take the pyramid as their frame, and Wall job (2026) is a wall piece. He carries drawings and motifs from one material to another, moving between metal, paper and craft techniques. His years living in Turkey drew him towards the abstract, non-narrative forms of Eastern craft and tradition. He leaves the meaning of each work open to the viewer.

Er works mainly with paper and ink. Her long experience in animation shapes how she handles light, shadow, movement and time. She cuts, adds to, colours and stacks sheets of paper, and turns lines taken from city skylines into reliefs and free-standing pieces. The exhibition includes two works from her "Surfaces & Lines" series (2026) and The cast of "A City Rehearsal" (2022), a paper work of variable dimensions. The gallery is open Tuesday to Friday, 11am to 6.30pm, and Saturday, 12pm to 6.30pm.