"Appearance was nothingness, and appearance had no existence other than the presence of illusion and error."
-Jean-Paul Sartre

The representational formations of forms are the construction of the non-existent and lack of our era, a ontological carving of what the early 21st century looks like from the outside, from the distant future.

The artist's creations are a rebellion against the nullification that internal existence has been exposed to since Fordism. They stand as a response to the deaf and mute violence of the century we live in. Through his paintings and sculptures, he leaves traces and signs for the future as an expression of the universal routine.

In the semantic collision between "being - non-being" and "good - evil," the hard materials such as iron and steel used in the artist's sculptures represent the hardness of nothingness. His paintings, suggesting the "permeable - transparent" texture of existence, propose a new plastic discourse that epicizes the dualities of "birth - death" as a reaction to nothingness.

Melis Erdem, who completed her undergraduate degree in Interior Architecture at Istanbul's Işık University and her master's degree at ELISAVA, Pompeu Fabra University, in the "Retail Design" department in Barcelona, returned to Istanbul in 2017 to develop her projects in the field of art and design after two years of collaborations. In contrast to the disciplined technical approach brought by her architectural education, she works with complex figures to interpret the flaws of life in her painting and sculpture works.

In her paintings and sculptures, she focuses on finding balance in chaos, accepting the natural cycle of processes such as decay and aging gently. In her productions supported by using unwanted and abandoned materials, she aims to give these objects a different form by shaping them into new compositions, separating them from their everyday uses.