ART CITIES:Berlin-Antonio Cosentino

Antonio Cosentino graduated from the Painting Department at Mimar Sinan University, Fine Arts Academy in 1994. In his works, one finds a wealth of images distilled from everyday life, the depths of personal, memory, and the visual culture of Istanbul, the artist’s city. Blending childlike graphics with stencils, logos, photo-realistic images and the blocky type typical of hand-painted signs, his aesthetic is instantly recognizable.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Zilberman Gallery Archive

Since the 1990s, Antonio Cosentino has been interested in the subculture and architectural developments; the uncanny destructions and the metamorphosis of the city of Istanbul. Many of Cosentino’s works look at historical events from a humorous perspective to create fictitious arrangements that fold different stories back on one another. Dazzling arrays of techniques contain larger political, historical and philosophical questions. Influenced by the history of Berlin as a divided city, the artist imagines a wall erected in one night in the city of Istanbul, In his speculative fiction story “Summer Was a Beautiful Day”, not only words but also objects, installations, drawings, paintings and a map merge to tell the narrative in chapters. Maps, urban models and small objects such as tin toys, soda bottle caps, albums that Cosentino collected during his residency at Zilberman Gallery Berlin’s artist-in-residence program in the summer of 2017, become the tools of storytelling for the narrator-protagonist. The collected material, with the influence of the story, turned into artworks such as the tin 3D model “Tuz” (2017) that reminds a ship or the charcoal drawing “Hiro” (2017). The artist references the micro ecosystems of city life by using recycled materials within his work, and in particular tin, which carries both an economic and cultural significance at the periphery of Istanbul.

Info: Zilberman Gallery Berlin, Goethestraße 82, Berlin, Duration: 9/2/- 14/4/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.zilbermangallery.com