Gökçen Cabadan’s “Mess” at Öktem Aykut, Istanbul: What to Expect from a Painter of Domestic Unease

Gallery announcements rarely come sparer than this: an artist’s name, one word, two dates. Gökçen Cabadan’s “Mess” at Öktem Aykut in Istanbul runs from 24 October to 21 November 2026, and at the time of writing the gallery has published little beyond the title. For an artist whose recent work has been about the fragile order of private life, a single word like “Mess” already says a lot.

Gökçen Cabadan: from İzmir to Ghent to Beyoğlu

Cabadan was born in İzmir in 1980 and studied painting at Dokuz Eylül University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, graduating in 2009, before taking a master’s in media art at KASK, the School of Arts in Ghent. Early solo shows came at Galerist (Progeria, 2008) and NON (Black Box, 2009), and a 2010 residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris followed. Since 2016 his home in Istanbul has been Öktem Aykut, where he has presented Dystopia (2016), Monogamy in Recollection (2017), Gaslighting (2021) and Anti-Baby (2025). Institutional group shows include SALT (2015) and Arter’s Suppose You Are Not (2024).

Read as a sequence, those exhibition titles form a kind of autobiography of anxiety: a broken future, the memory of fidelity, psychological manipulation, a refusal of reproduction. “Mess” slots into that vocabulary naturally.

The last chapter: Anti-Baby

The best guide to the new show is the previous one. Anti-Baby, shown at Öktem Aykut in 2025, brought together 13 works, mostly in oil pastel, ranging from portraits and invented scenes to painting-installations. The gallery’s text described a practice concerned with domesticity, coming of age and self-absorption. The fetal position recurred as an image of the womb’s safety and isolation from the outside world, while adulthood was framed through optimisation, doubt, desire and time.

Oil pastel is an interesting choice for an artist with Cabadan’s training. It is a medium associated with childhood and with sketching, yet it can produce dense, waxy, saturated surfaces that sit somewhere between drawing and painting. Used to depict adult anxieties, it creates a productive tension: grown-up subjects rendered in the materials of a child’s art box.

Reading the title

“Mess” can mean physical disorder — an untidy room, a domestic space gone out of control — or emotional and moral confusion. Both senses fit Cabadan’s long-standing focus on the home as a psychological arena. We will not speculate about the specific works; the gallery has yet to release images, a press text or a medium for the exhibition. Visitors should go expecting continuity with the themes above rather than a confirmed list of pieces, and check the gallery’s channels for updates as the opening approaches.

Öktem Aykut and the Meşrutiyet corridor

Öktem Aykut occupies a space at Meşrutiyet Caddesi 99 in Beyoğlu, a short walk from Pera Museum and the Tepebaşı end of İstiklal — one of the busiest stretches of Istanbul’s gallery map. The gallery has built its reputation by working with Turkish artists over long periods, and Cabadan’s fifth solo show there is a clear example of that commitment. Pair the visit with the other autumn openings in Beyoğlu and Karaköy for an afternoon’s gallery walk.

Why it matters

• For collectors: a mid-career Turkish painter with consistent gallery support, European training and inclusion in shows at Arter and SALT.
• For painters: an example of how an unfashionable medium such as oil pastel can carry serious psychological content.
• For visitors: work that speaks directly to contemporary experiences of home, intimacy and adulthood — subjects almost everyone recognises.

Visiting information

Öktem Aykut, Meşrutiyet Caddesi 99, Beyoğlu, 34430 Istanbul. 24 October – 21 November 2026. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 12–7pm; email [email protected]. Opening details have not yet been announced. See the gallery website and artist page, our Mess listing, and more Istanbul openings on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.