Biography
Born in Istanbul in 1968, Gazi Sansoy studied Graphic Design at Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts from 1989 to 1993. He completed his master's degree in 1996 under the supervision of Mustafa Aslıer. Between 2007 and 2015, he founded and managed the Ütopya Platform Art Gallery. Since 2009, he has worked in his own studio in Kızıltoprak, Istanbul. In 2014, he exhibited printmaking at IMOGA. His works, which seek a compromise between the contemporary and the traditional, and which often feature absurd interventions in traditional works, reflect a unique pictorial language. In his recent works, the influence of Levni, a famous artist of the Tulip Era, is widely visible. Sansoy's works feature three main groups of figures: Levni's images, which form the main body of his works; figures of famous painters from the Western painting tradition; and contemporary, erotic female figures taken from the internet. He is known for his multi-layered, large-scale paintings produced with hundreds of small figures. In these thought-provoking paintings, Sansoy remarkably compares Levni's figures to those of artists like Rembrandt on the same scale, contrasting two rival civilizations from both art historical and socio-cultural perspectives. Sansoy has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Turkey and abroad, and continues his work in his studios in Kızıltoprak, Büyükada, and Ayvalık.
