Evren Tekinoktay (b.1972) lives and works in Copenhagen, DK. In 1999 she graduated from The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark after years at Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (1993-97) and at Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht (1997-99). Tekinoktay moves effortlessly between medias - from handcrafted wall based neon reliefs with painted plexiglass, collages in paper on wooden panel, embroidered fabric works mounted on mirror and paintings on plexiglass. Despite the obvious difference in the media they all share a common interest in the collage. Tekinoktay cuts, pastes and paints a wide variety of motives, shapes and forms, thereby creating her own colorful and vibrant language.

Artist statement

I started my first neon works in 2014 and have been working with neon ever since. Neon is a sublimely generous medium with references to the past and the future, it is insistently captivating and at the same time fragile because it is glass and gas. Neon immediately appeals to our sense of sight and has a portion of what music can do to affect us instantly.

Neon is connecting. It comes across generations, nationalities and comes through different cultures. Most of us have an underlying reference to it. Not one we are necessarily clearly aware of.
Neon opens up for a tantalizingly beautiful longing, for a kind of past and future nostalgia.