Ayhan Çetin’s “Kent Belleği” at Galeri Soyut, Ankara: Painting the City as a Memory Machine

A bus stop. A school minibus. A zebra crossing. These are not the subjects most painters choose when they want to be taken seriously — and that is exactly what makes Ayhan Çetin’s “Kent Belleği” at Galeri Soyut in Ankara worth a closer look. The solo painting exhibition, whose title translates as “City Memory”, opens on Friday 30 October 2026 and runs until 11 November in the gallery’s A Salonu in Çankaya. It brings together 29 acrylic canvases that set the overlooked furniture of daily urban life alongside some of Turkey’s most painted views.

Kent Belleği: a question rather than a postcard

Galeri Soyut’s exhibition text frames the show around one deceptively simple question, which it puts roughly as: “Do we build the city and its spaces, or does the city’s rhythm…” build us in turn? The text describes the city as a space of memory, a place that resists forgetting, and looks at both the physical lines of urban space and the rhythm of everyday life. It is a useful lens. A street painting can be a picturesque souvenir; it can also be a record of how a place shapes the people who move through it every day.

Çetin’s list of titles shows which side of that line he wants to stand on. Next to Balat, Eminönü, Kız Kulesi (the Maiden’s Tower) and two canvases called Boğaz (the Bosphorus), there are works named Durak (Stop), Trafik, Okul servisi (School bus), Yaya geçidi (Pedestrian crossing), Depo (Warehouse) and Mahalle (Neighbourhood). The famous and the ordinary hang side by side, with equal weight.

Who is Ayhan Çetin?

According to the gallery’s artist page, Ayhan Çetin was born in 1978 in Kırcali (Kardzhali), Bulgaria, and works as both a painter and an academic. He graduated from İzmir Anadolu Güzel Sanatlar Lisesi in 1997, took his BA in painting at Anadolu University’s Faculty of Fine Arts in 2001 and his MA there in 2004, and completed the Proficiency in Art — the doctorate-level degree in Turkish art education — at Marmara University in 2011. He began teaching at Trakya University in Edirne in 2002 and has been an assistant professor in its Faculty of Fine Arts painting department since 2014.

His relationship with Galeri Soyut is a long one. He has appeared in the gallery’s group exhibitions since 2011, in shows such as Küçük Şeyler, Esnek Zamanlar, Frekans and Figür/Yorum, and on its stands at Artankara, Art Contact İstanbul and Artnouva. The gallery describes his practice as moving between figuration and abstraction, combining contemporary approaches with traditional elements and cultural heritage. Details of earlier solo exhibitions, awards and collections are not published, so collectors should ask the gallery directly.

What is in the exhibition

The 29 works range from large compositions to small panels. The pieces published so far are acrylic on canvas: Merdiven (Staircase, 2026, 100 x 100 cm), the work reproduced at the top of this article; Kız Kulesi (2026, 100 x 80 cm); and the smaller Gazze (Gaza, 2023, 35 x 70 cm), a reminder that a painter’s map of the city can also extend to cities seen only through the news.

Geographically, the selection makes three loops. One stays in Istanbul — Balat, Eminönü, the Bosphorus and the Maiden’s Tower. A second travels to Anatolia and the Aegean coast: Nevşehir, Cappadocia, Kaş, Kaş’s market and castle, and Kekova. The third never leaves the street, with its warehouses, crossings and traffic. Read together, they suggest that memory is not tied to landmarks alone; it settles just as easily on the stairway you climb every morning.

For anyone who cannot get to Çankaya, Galeri Soyut has also published a virtual tour of the hang on its website — a practical way to preview the paintings before a visit or a purchase enquiry.

Galeri Soyut and Ankara’s gallery scene

Galeri Soyut says it has worked in contemporary Turkish art since 1990. Today it runs two spaces, in Yıldızevler (Çankaya) and Çayyolu, represents artists, takes part in fairs and holds candle auctions (mum müzayede), a traditional Turkish sale format. Its double-hall model means visitors usually see more than one show at once: on the same dates, the B Salonu hosts exhibitions by Hamdi Eser and Olgu Sümengen Berker, making an opening-night visit on 30 October a three-for-one.

That matters in Ankara, where the commercial gallery scene is concentrated and loyal. Painters who teach — as Çetin does — form a significant part of it, and galleries like Soyut give their studio work a regular public platform outside the university.

Why painters and collectors should go

For painters, the exhibition is a lesson in subject choice: how to make a pedestrian crossing carry as much feeling as the Bosphorus, and how a consistent medium — here, acrylic — can hold together a very wide range of scales. For collectors, it offers an established Turkish painter-academic with a fifteen-year relationship with his gallery, and works in sizes that suit both a living room and a corporate wall. Prices are not published; ask Galeri Soyut.

And for anyone who lives in a city — which is most of us — the show asks a question worth carrying home: which corners of your own street will you remember?

Visiting information

Galeri Soyut, Yıldızevler, Şehit Mustafa Doğan Caddesi No: 26/A, Çankaya, Ankara. 30 October – 11 November 2026. Opening reception: Friday 30 October, 18:00–20:00. Open Monday–Saturday, 10:00–19:00; closed Sundays. Free entry; the gallery recommends making an appointment. Phone: +90 532 550 99 94.

See the official exhibition page, our exhibition listing, and more Ankara and Istanbul openings on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.