Engin Kafadar’s “Aklımdan Çıkanlar 2” in Istanbul: A Creative Director Opens His Sketchbooks

Every creative professional has them: the margins of meeting notes, the backs of envelopes, the sketchbooks that fill up while the “real” work happens elsewhere. Engin Kafadar has kept his for more than twenty years — and now he is hanging them on the wall. Engin Kafadar: Aklımdan Çıkanlar 2 at Galeri Selvin, Istanbul opens the gallery’s new season in Arnavutköy and runs from 15 to 31 October 2026.

From the advertising studio to the gallery wall

Kafadar was born in Istanbul in 1970 and studied graphic design at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Anadolu University. He built his career in advertising, where he works as a creative director, and his record in that field is long: according to the exhibition’s press coverage, it includes 29 Kristal Elma finalist placements, two Altın Elma awards, two Epica awards, ten Golden Drum finalist placements and two New York Festivals awards. In an industry where ideas are judged in seconds and polished to a shine, the sketch is where everything starts — and usually where it is left behind.

The title, which translates roughly as “What Came Out of My Mind,” makes the premise clear. This is the second part of the series; the first presented an earlier selection from the same archive.

A diary written in lines

The exhibition gathers sketches, notes, doodles, memories and fragments of thought accumulated over roughly two decades, worked in line and colour. It is deliberately not a show of finished works or a tidy narrative. Instead it lets visitors see how ideas take shape — their raw beginnings, their changes over time, the traces of experience they carry. The press describes the drawings as a candid inner outpouring, and as carrying a sense of “future memories”: notes made in one moment that only become meaningful later.

There is no set theme and no academic framework. The works grow from everyday encounters and observations, following the free flow of line, colour and thought. Kafadar presents the project as a diary kept in drawing rather than writing, and his own statement is refreshingly modest. As quoted by Artkolik, he writes: “Belki hiçbir şey anlatmak istemedim. Belki sadece düşündüm!” — “Maybe I didn’t want to tell anything. Maybe I just thought!”

Why the unfinished is worth looking at

Art history has long valued the sketch. Museums prize the notebooks of Renaissance masters and the studies of modern painters precisely because they show thinking before it hardens into a finished image. A sketch has a speed and honesty that a final work often loses. Kafadar’s exhibition belongs to that tradition, but with a contemporary twist: these are the private drawings of someone whose day job is producing public images. Seeing what a professional image-maker draws when there is no client, no brief and no deadline is the real interest here.

According to ArtTV, the show explores the link between personal memory and spontaneous expression and values making art without seeking approval or a fixed meaning. The works combine traces of the past with present thoughts, inviting viewers into the artist’s inner world rather than delivering a message.

Galeri Selvin and Arnavutköy

Galeri Selvin sits on Dere Sokak in Arnavutköy, one of the Bosphorus’s most atmospheric neighbourhoods, with its wooden houses, narrow streets and waterfront fish restaurants. It is a different Istanbul from the big-gallery corridors of Beyoğlu, Karaköy and Dolapdere — smaller and more intimate, a fitting setting for an exhibition built from notebooks. Opening the season with a show like this sets a personal, unpretentious tone.

Who should go

• Designers and advertising professionals: a rare look at the private drawing practice of one of the sector’s most decorated creative directors.
• Painters and students: encouragement to treat the sketchbook as a body of work in its own right, not just a means to an end.
• Collectors of works on paper: an opportunity to see an archive of drawings by an artist outside the usual gallery circuit — ask the gallery about available works.

Visiting information

Galeri Selvin, Dere Sokak No:3, Arnavutköy, Beşiktaş, Istanbul. 15–31 October 2026 — a short run, so plan ahead. Closed Sunday; the gallery website gives Monday–Saturday 11:00–19:00, while press listings give 11:00–18:00, so please confirm before visiting. Phone +90 212 263 74 81, [email protected], galeriselvin.com. The gallery has not yet published an exhibition page; press coverage is available from Artkolik. Full details are on our Aklımdan Çıkanlar 2 listing, with more shows on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.