Sinem Demirci’s “Inside Your Head” at PG Art Gallery: Five Ways Into an Uncanny Istanbul Painting Show

“Here, nothing is entirely where it should be.” That line, from the gallery’s Turkish press text, is the best key to Sinem Demirci’s “Inside Your Head” at PG Art Gallery in Istanbul, a solo painting exhibition running from 24 October to 27 November 2026. Demirci paints scenes that look, at first glance, like everyday life — until a detail tilts and the whole picture slides somewhere else. Rather than a conventional review, here are five ways into the show.

1. Start with the artist: Sinem Demirci, Istanbul painter

Sinem Demirci was born in Istanbul in 1991 and graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Okan University in 2015, where she studied on a merit-based scholarship. She lives and works in her home city. Her gallery profile points to a sustained interest in the idea of the “multiple self” and to portraits in which features are deformed or distorted — faces that refuse to settle into one stable identity. That background matters for “Inside Your Head”: even when no face is visible, the paintings are about the inner theatre of a person, the stage behind the eyes that the title invites us to enter.

2. Look for the ordinary detail that goes wrong

According to PG Art Gallery, Demirci’s compositions begin from small, banal moments of daily life which, through unexpected encounters, open onto another reality. The strategy is an old and powerful one. The Surrealists knew that the most disturbing images are not monsters but familiar things slightly misplaced; Freud called this effect the uncanny — the homely become unhomely. Demirci’s version is gentle rather than shocking. Expect a tension you feel before you can name it.

3. Notice who shares the scene

Women, animals and objects co-exist in the same pictorial space. The gallery describes familiar relationships giving way to companionships that need no explanation. This is the emotional core of the show: the animals are not symbols to decode, and the objects are not props. They keep company with the figures on equal terms. For viewers, the interesting question is not “what does the dog mean?” but “why does this pairing feel right, even though it shouldn’t?”

4. Resist the urge to explain

The press text makes a sharp observation: the absurd may lie less in what we see than in our need to make it mean something. The exhibition offers no single narrative. Each painting is left open, and the viewer completes it from personal memory and imagination. This is a useful reminder in an art world addicted to wall texts. Demirci’s works ask for time and projection rather than interpretation — the “head” of the title is, in the end, partly yours.

5. Think about the collecting moment

For collectors, Demirci belongs to a generation of Turkish painters born around 1990 who came through Istanbul’s private art faculties in the 2010s and are now consolidating a recognisable figurative language. Uncanny, quietly psychological figuration has been one of the strongest currents in international painting over the past decade, and a gallery solo show is the best place to see whether an artist’s vocabulary holds together across a body of work. For painters, the lesson is compositional: how much strangeness can a picture carry before it tips into illustration? Demirci’s answer seems to be — just a little, placed exactly.

PG Art Gallery in Maslak

PG Art Gallery is located away from the Beyoğlu gallery cluster, in Maslak on Istanbul’s European side, inside the Atatürk Oto Sanayi Sitesi. Visitors coming from the centre should plan the trip; the Maslak business district is well served by the M2 metro line. The detour is part of the experience: seeing an exhibition about the everyday turned strange in an unexpected setting suits the mood of the work.

Visiting information

PG Art Gallery, Maslak Atatürk Oto Sanayi Sitesi, 2. Kısım, 6. Sokak, Üst Kat No:171, Maslak, Sarıyer, İstanbul. 24 October – 27 November 2026. The gallery lists its hours as Monday–Saturday, 10:00–18:00; phone +90 212 252 80 00, email [email protected]. An opening reception has not been announced online, so check with the gallery. See the official exhibition page, our Inside Your Head listing, and Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries for more.