Nermin Ülker’s “Dört Köşeli Üçgen” at Black Light Gallery, Istanbul: Metal Sculptures for Sentences Left Unsaid

Try to draw a triangle with four corners and the pencil stops. The shape exists perfectly well as a phrase — you can say it, even picture it for a moment — but it will not settle into the world. That impossible figure gives its name to Nermin Ülker’s “Dört Köşeli Üçgen” at Black Light Gallery in Istanbul, a solo exhibition of metal sculpture that opened in Karaköy on 20 October and runs until 5 December 2026. Its full title, Yerini Bulamamış Cümlelerin Anıtları, translates roughly as “monuments to sentences that never found their place”.

A title borrowed from Salâh Birsel

Dört Köşeli Üçgen (1961) is the only novel by Salâh Birsel, the poet and essayist better known for his sharp, witty prose about Istanbul life. Its central character is a guard whom those around him dismiss as an “observer” because he says out loud what he sees — and is criticised for doing so. The exhibition, curated by Filiz Ağdemir, takes that figure as its starting point. It is concerned with sentences that were never formed, never spoken or never given a home, because saying them would have carried a price.

The geometry of the title does the rest. Just as a square triangle can be imagined but not built, Ülker gives physical form to sentences that live in the mind but have no place in public. The sculptures become, literally, monuments to the unsaid.

From nursing to the sculpture studio

Ülker’s own path is unusually direct about the cost of making art. Born in 1974 in Karadeniz Ereğli on the Black Sea coast, she worked for many years as a nurse and, according to Anadolu Agency, still works in nursing to fund her practice. She began studying sculpture after the age of 35, graduating from the sculpture department at Işık University in Istanbul in 2012 and then completing a master’s degree in art theory and criticism at the same university, where she now teaches sculpture.

Her studio sits in the Maslak Atatürk Oto Sanayi Sitesi, an industrial estate of mechanics’ workshops and metal shops — a fitting environment for an artist who works in metal. Since her first solo show, Penceremden at C.A.M. Galeri in 2013, she has exhibited regularly: Pencereler at Açıkekran Levent (2016, curated by Ali Akay), hané at Krank Art Gallery (2019), and Yuvarlağın Köşeleri (2023) and Gözün Kayıp Oyuğu (2026) at Labirent Sanat. She has also taken part in around thirty group exhibitions, including Contemporary Istanbul and ArtWeeks Akaretler. Recurring images — home, window, woman, space — run through the titles alone.

How the sculptures work

The new pieces grow directly out of the previous show, whose metal forms were completed by voids. Here those hollowed forms carry text. The sentences are built into the metal itself, but layered surfaces, wide openings and linear bodies make them difficult to read: you see that something is being said before you can tell what it is. The works stand on the floor without pedestals, removing the usual boundary between object and viewer and pulling the visitor into the act of deciphering.

That partial legibility is the heart of the exhibition. Does hiding a sentence protect it, or censor it? The show deliberately hovers between privacy and testimony. Ülker has described her motivation plainly to Anadolu Agency: she makes work “so that I don’t stay silent.” The gallery has not published the number of works or individual titles, so the experience in the room is the best guide.

Black Light Gallery and the Fransız Geçidi

Black Light Gallery occupies a first-floor space in the Fransız Geçidi (Cité Française), a passage building in Karaköy dating from 1860, according to Bayrak Haber. The gallery has said it wants to slow the fast pace of the art market and make room for voices outside mainstream trends — an ambition that suits a show this quiet and this demanding. Karaköy and neighbouring Tophane remain among the densest gallery districts in the city, so the visit combines easily with others nearby.

Why it matters

Text-based art often stays flat — on walls, in neon, on paper. Ülker’s achievement is to make language heavy, to give it the weight and resistance of metal. For collectors interested in Turkish sculpture, she represents a mid-career artist with a consistent body of work and a distinctive story. For sculptors and painters, the show is a study in how a material constraint — metal that will not easily bend into letters — can become the meaning of the work. And for any visitor, it raises a question that feels sharply contemporary: which sentences do we carry around without ever finding a place to put them down?

Visiting information

Black Light Gallery, Fransız Geçidi İş Merkezi, C Blok, Kat 1, No: 14, Kemankeş Caddesi, Karaköy, Beyoğlu, Istanbul. 20 October – 5 December 2026. Open Tuesday to Saturday (Tuesday–Friday from 10:00, Saturday from 11:00; the gallery lists two slightly different closing times, so check before visiting). Email [email protected].

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