PRESS RELEASE
Turkey’s prestigious online art gallery Artcrowdistanbul continues its art season, which began in Barcelona, with Harun Antakyalı’s
“Rock, Paper, Scissors”
solo exhibition.
Opening on November 29 and available online for two months, the exhibition brings Harun Antakyalı’s three different material languages together with the audience through a narrative based on a game.
Structured in three different sections—Rock, Paper, Scissors—the exhibition represents a new stop in Harun Antakyalı’s visual language, which extends from the street to the gallery, from the public to the individual experience.
Harun Antakyalı interprets street art, which speaks the language of city walls, sidewalks, and temporary surfaces, through a game this time. Like the cyclical power relations in the game “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” the artist’s production explores the tensions between permanence and transience, public and personal, chance and control. Antakyalı’s brushstrokes bear traces of spray paint, the texture of the wall, and the energy of the street; stone, paper, and scissors meet once again—this time in a digital exhibition.
Digital and Physical Exhibition, “From Screen to Studio”
“Stone, Paper, Scissors” will be available online at Artcrowdistanbul Online Gallery from November 29, 2025, to January 29, 2026, and physically at the artist’s studio on Istiklal Street by appointment.
The exhibition, structured into three distinct sections—Rock-Paper-Scissors—features works by Harun Antakyalı that integrate the “concrete” material under the Stone heading with Harun Antakyalı, and works using the “paper” material that combine the artist’s naive and fragile material with the harsh language of the street.
The Stone section features works by Harun Antakyalı using “concrete,” a material that has become synonymous with him. The Paper section features the artist’s works on paper, where he combines naive and fragile materials with the harsh language of the street. In the Scissors section, the artist’s new series, which the audience will encounter for the first time, awaits us. It is far from concrete and spray paint but parallel in content. On a single-color background, individual figures come to life through controlled pencil strokes.
Regarding this new encounter and the exhibition title, curator Şanel Şan Sevinç says: "The title ‘Stone, Paper, Scissors’ refers not only to a game but also to the cyclical balance in production: stone, which is hard and permanent; paper, which is fragile but strong; and scissors, which intervene and transform. Each move transforms the other; Antakyalı’s paintings also work with this dynamic: they begin with a hard gesture, multiply on the surface, and evolve layer by layer into another form. We examine this evolution in three sections of the exhibition."
About the exhibition
Harun Antakyalı, who is appearing before the audience with his personal exhibition after a two-year hiatus, writes about the exhibition:
"...We are as hard as stone, as perceptive as paper, as sharp as scissors.
War is within us; we have traits that defeat each other.
We don’t have to be harsh to make ourselves stronger. While our sharpness is helpless in the face of our fragility, our understanding can overcome harshness.
We are in a universal playing field. We have the power to break rules and create new ones. Art constantly offers us clues to develop our identity. We have scissors to cut the string, stones to crush, paper to grasp and store. It is in our hands to destroy, to continue, to protect," he says.
For more information about the exhibition, which will be held at Artcrowdistanbul Online Gallery for two months and will meet the audience with various events, and for interview requests, you can send an email to info@artcrowdistanbul.com.
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In brief
• Exhibition Title: Stone, Paper, Scissors
• Artist: Harun Antakyalı
• Physical exhibition: Harun Antakyalı Studio (by appointment only, for collectors)
• Digital exhibition: www.artcrowdistanbul.com
• Contact: info@artcrowdistanbul.com