İskender Giray
Iskender Giray, born in Ankara in 1978, grew up in various parts of Turkey due to his father's profession. His family finally moved to Istanbul, where he spent most of his youth. As a child eager to see the differences and commonalities between cultures, these displacements were a good observation opportunity for him.
From an early age, his life was full of art and crafts. However, like many artists in Turkey, he found himself in the socio-economic dilemma created by the conjuncture, which forced him to a "real" profession for a "safe" future, and chose to study his second passion, physics, in his words, "the knowledge of the universe". He studied Physical Engineering at Istanbul Technical University. He believed that his knowledge of physics taught him different ways of observing and the ability to process different data to obtain a new solution.
He decided to devote himself only to art in 2006, and he left the ITU Physics Engineering Master's program he was studying and his job at that time. He worked in many craft and art workshops in order to add new experiences to his experience he obtained in sculpture and to reach the equipment he aimed for.
Since then, he has been collecting data to generate his artistic practice and storing any new information with the eagerness to turn it into another work.
Except for his works exhibited, the artist, who is also famous for his iron sculptures, named as "Guerrilla Sculptures", that he placed on his own discretion in the streets of Kadikoy, which is the region where he lives, likes to use bronze, steel, and iron materials in his works. He sees the anamorphic technique as an additional dimension for expression in some of his sculptures. He mostly builds his works on a story, focusing on issues such as "nature" and "social injustice". The artist, who has many sculptures in the public sphere, also put his signature to the most complex kinetic sculpture in Turkey, again built on a story.
As an artist, he always has the desire to create a new world without giving up on his own world.
