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Haluk Akakçe was born in Ankara in 1970. He received a B.F.A. in Architecture at Bilkent University in Ankara in 1993 and continued his studies on video and performance art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago under an M.F.A. scholarship and at the Royal College of Art in London for his master degrees. His works explore the intersections between society and technology through video animations, wall paintings, three dimensional sculptures and sound installations. He creates installation of murals to assist his videos with geometric abstract figures or natural forms and multi dimensional sculptures, playing with depth, light, shadow and reflection. Akakçe’s works have been exhibited in internationally acclaimed institutions and art events including the Istanbul, San Paulo and Shanghai Biennials, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Walker Art Centre in Minnesota, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, the Tate Britain, Royal Academy of Art and Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Among his numerous solo shows, Akakçe has exhibited at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York and the Berlin Kunst Werke and Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel and Centre d’art Contemporary in Geneva and Platform Garanti in Istanbul. His works were also the subject of various reviews and articles in international publications such as Flash Art, Frieze, Artform, Art in America and Vogue. Akakçe was invited to lecture at museums, biennials and galleries and was a visiting art critic at Yale University in Connecticut during the spring of 2005.
Akakçe was shortlisted for the Beck′s Futures award at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 2004. In November 2006, his “The Sky is the Limit” animated the 12.5 million LEDs of the enormous Viva Vision canopy on Freemont Street in downtown Las Vegas, a public art project in collaboration with Creative Time, the City of Las Vegas Arts Commission and the Freemont Street Experience. At 8 p.m. each evening that month, the entire street was plunged into darkness before Akakçe′s animation began to trickle across the LED surface, gradually turning the canopy into a cascade of abstractions and colors. Akakçe lives and works in New York.
Reference: Sotheby’s London Contemporary Art Turkish 4 March 2009 (London 2009), p.14 and 98; the-artists.org; noguerasblanchard.com; bernier-eliades.gr; deitch.com; wikipedia.org
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