Harita ve Topraklar (The Map and The Territory)

Labirent Sanat in Beyoğlu, Istanbul, presents Harita ve Topraklar (The Map and The Territory) from 3 November 2026 to 2 January 2027. Ten artists take part in this group exhibition of figurative work. They are Dila Kasapoğlu, Dilara Göl, Emel Ezal, Emre Celali, Hüseyin Rüstemoğlu, Melis İmrağ, Merve Gözde Bingül, Sena Gökçeoğlu, Yasin Öztekin and Zeynep Abacı. The works are made on paper and in acrylic, oil paint and pencil.

The exhibition is the first portfolio show to come out of a collaboration between Sanat Okur and Labirent Sanat. Its title echoes a line by Michel Houellebecq, quoted by the gallery, that the map was more interesting than the territory. The gallery frames the selection against what it calls a techno-feudal order. In that order, it argues, the body is flattened into two-dimensional images and data.

Against this, the works place the body and its skin at the centre. The gallery describes skin as a living surface that air, water and heat pass through, not a boundary drawn on a map. The artists favour unfinished passages, distorted figures and the folds of the body over the smooth look of screens. Material is treated as active. Paper is fragile, layers of acrylic and oil build up like skin, and pencil cuts into the surface.

Among the exhibitors, Hüseyin Rüstemoğlu was born in Bursa in 1981. He studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Sakarya University, graduating in 2006, and completed a master's degree there in 2012. He works from a studio in Istanbul. His image on the gallery's page shows a small bird on a branch above a reclining nude figure, in black and white. The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 7pm.