KITH & KID: Creating New Meanings With Old Photos

Melih Çebi, who opened his first solo exhibition with analogue works in a world where, even in art, the more digital the better, is now caught up on our radar with his mischievous approach to nostalgia and his drawings with a characteristic style. There is nothing new on the high art front; now the independent designers are setting the agenda with the lowbrow movement!

When we inhale the smell of old books in the antiquarians, we also sadly sense black and white photographs in an old box located near the door or on a corner of the counter. Thinking about the process that made the photographs into objects that is to be sold in a small box in a small shop, might make us sad in the first place. The urge to look even more carefully at one of them and our curiosity come together to provoke us and by taking the photo in our hands, we begin to add meaning to the expressions of people in the photo, start to construct their stories in our minds, and try to guess the place where the picture was taken by distancing ourselves from the subjects. This experience which at first saddened us, and then made us wonder, and ultimately allowed us to create stories by provoking our creativity may well have been the routine of Melih Çebi since 2015. Because Melih Çebi, as a freelance illustrator and art director, works with these black and white photographs that he has collected for a while. These photographs, freezing very interesting moments of the past, are interfered with acrylic paint.We can argue that the interventions made to the subjects, in particular, with his own line in their expressions turns into a deconstructive touch. Attributing new meanings and assumptions, as well as breaking it up, are actions that are unique to us and absolutely important. Melih Çebi does this skillfully with the series that follows the pop surrealism movement.

The original works of Melih Çelebi, who first published his works on Instagram, by catching up with his generation not in the way of making it but perhaps in the way of presenting it, can be seen until October 30th at Markus Ribs, which is the experimental cool boy of the gastronomy world, located in Atatürk Oto Sanayi.