Serkan Özkaya

Serkan Özkaya (born 1973) is a Turkish and American conceptual artist whose work deals with topics of appropriation and reproduction.

He typically operates outside of traditional art spaces and often makes multiple versions of even his own work, including his most noted work David (inspired by Michelangelo).

Özkaya's artworks are held in the permanent collections of the İstanbul Modern, Borusan Contemporary Art, and Arter in Istanbul, as well as three different 21c Museum Hotels locations—Louisville, Kentucky; Bentonville, Arkansas; and Nashville, Tennessee.

Özkaya grew up in Istanbul, Turkey.

At a young age, he began learning about Western art through the study of reproductions of major artworks found in books.

It is here his interests in the concepts originality, replication and emulation began.

He attended Istanbul University, graduating with both a bachelor and a master's degree in arts.

He continued his graduate studies at Bard College.

After leaving Bard with a master's degree in fine art, he received an art fellowship at MacDowell Colony.

Özkaya then returned to Istanbul University to study for his Ph.D. in German Language and Literature.

Dear Sir or Madam (1996–2009) is a collection of letters and other correspondences between Özkaya and cultural institutions, dignitaries and curators.

It is his own paper trail of bureaucracy in inaction.

In the collection, among others, are his letters to the Louvre asking that he be allowed to hang the Mona Lisa upside down, and a letter to the German Bundestag that they permit him to re-wrap the Reichstag.

Often, the letters do not deserve a response but curiously, they have usually been treated with official but unthinking courtesy, read perhaps but not comprehended—answered and then often passed along the bureaucratic chain.

Among them was Proletarier Aller Laender (1998-2009) or Proletariat of all Countries, as it is also known in English, a collection of red plastic foam figurines glued to the floor.

In viewing this work, the audience is most likely forced to trample on the little figures as if to trample on the working classes.

However, the proletariat, which the figurines represent, in "their resilience and ultimate power always springing back, indestructible".

In 2000, Özkaya collected roughly 30,000 slides from artists, galleries, and institutions and showed them on one of the largest galleries in the main pedestrian street in Istanbul, at the Kazim Taskent Art Gallery.

What A Museum Should Really Look Like (Large Glass) presented a giant mosaic of individual images.

During the day, the slides were readable from the inside of the gallery and at night, with the lights on, they became a scene for the street.

This piece was later initiated in Utrecht, the Netherlands in a much larger scale with 100,000 slides.

The collage of thousands of pieces of artwork was collected through an online advertisement.

All of the works were arranged in the mosaic with no coherent order and no editorial or curatorial control from Özkaya.

In 2001, he published Genius and Creativity in the Arts, a comparative study of the German works Moses und Aron (an opera by Arnold Schoenberg), Doctor Faustus (a novel by Thomas Mann) and Die Philosophie der Neuen Musik (a book by Theodor W. Adorno).

In 2003, Özkaya turned the front and back covers of the Turkish language newspaper, Radikal into drawings.

This act enabled the reader to acquire a limited edition artwork for the price of the newspaper.

In early 2004, it was part of a group exhibition named "The Poetics of Proximity" at the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University.

In similar fashion, in subsequent years, some pages of several other newspapers were also hand-rendered and appeared as a print of the drawings.

The overall piece, entitled Today Could Be A Day Of Historical Importance was executed in Sweden with Aftonbladet, in Germany with Freitag, and in the US with The New York Times and The Courier-Journal.

The last of which was created in collaboration with the non-profit artwithoutwalls.

The New York Times version in the "Weekend Arts" section appeared mise en abyme with Özkaya's drawing appearing as an inset in the page and an even smaller drawing appearing as an inset of that, and so on, creating a Droste effect.

In 2005, Özkaya created David (inspired by Michelangelo), a double-sized golden replica of Michelangeloʼs David based on a 3D computer model by Marc Levoy of Stanford University.

The sculpture was first intended to be part of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial.

Unfortunately, the statue crashed and was destroyed while in the process of being installed at Şişli Square.

Özkaya created two new versions of the replica at a studio in Eskişehir, one of which was to be placed in the local Sazova Science, Art and Culture Park.

The other was acquired by 21c Museum Hotels in Louisville, Kentucky.

On its way to Louisville, the piece made a stop in New York City.

Although just a mere copy, the statue made quite a spectacle, as the artist intended, attracting the attention of tourists and residents as it was transported uncovered lying horizontally on a semi-trailer truck.

Other works in the exhibition included the golden sculptures Levitation by Defecation (2008), Shit on a Stick (2008), and Goldenboy (2006), "a fiberglass figure painted in gold acrylic and dangling a couple of feet off the ground by a noose".

In 2009, Dear Sir or Madam was exhibited at the Slag Gallery in New York along with works from the same period.