REQUIEM FOR A TREE Print

Born in 1978 in Ankara, Iskender Giray was brought up in various parts of Turkey because of his father’s profession. His family finally moved to Istanbul where he spent most of his youth and settled as an artist. He was always eager to see the differences and common points of cultures. Since early ages, his life was full of arts and crafts. However, he studied his second passion in the university as many artists in Turkey who found themselves in a socio-economic dilemma implemented by the conjuncture that force them to take another profession than art for a “safe” future life. Giray choose physics, the knowledge of the universe. He studied in Physics Engineering at the Istanbul Technical University and he believed that the knowledge of physics taught him different ways of observation and ways of putting different data to get a new solution. In 2006, he decided to commit himself only to the arts and quit not only master degree in Physics but also his corporate job. Since then, he has been collecting data to create his artistic practice, storing every piece of information only to transform it into a new work. Except for his works exhibited, the artist who is also known for his iron sculptures, named as "Guerrilla Sculptures", that he placed on his own discretion in the streets of Kadıköy , the region where he lives, in Turkey. He likes to use bronze, steel and iron materials in his works. In some of his sculptures, he views the anamorphic technique as an additional dimension for expression. He generally constructs his works on a story and most of his works are focused on matters such as "Nature" or "Social Injustice”. As an artist he is always in the desire of creating a new world without giving up his own.