IN THE STUDIO
Germany’s Ruhr region, where he’s
been living and working for the past
six or seven years.
An inclination for the unexpected
is in line with Alpay’s free-spirited
outlook, something that has shone
through since his time studying at the
prestigious Düsseldorf Academy of
Fine Arts. “I started art school in
2006 and, at that time, it was aninteresting transitional period in the
art world,” he explains. “Nobody was
painting any figurative and realistic
work, at least nobody really at the big
art fairs and art shows and galleries.
It was a lot of expressionism and
abstract art, but I was always
interested in figurative work, and
that’s what I did back then even.”
According to Alpay, standing outThe Old Masters painted
boring still life... I thought
wouldn’t it be interesting to
bring it into the 21st century
penguins as well as the tiger – formed
part of Alpay’s 2020 solo show,
endless forms most beautiful (named
after a quote from Charles Darwin’s
On the Origin of Species), held at the
kunst-raum schulte-goltz-noelte
gallery in Essen, Germany.
Inspiration for the show sprang
from the pandemic, but rather than
dealing with the morose themes of
isolation, loneliness and despair,
Alpay took an upbeat approach:
“When I started work on the
exhibition in 2020, you know what
happened, the world started to end
almost. I had the feeling I had to do
something that was a bit more
optimistic, a bit more uplifting, a bit
more focused on the beautiful.”
From joyful bouquets of flowers to a
tongue-in-cheek ancient Greek statue
wearing a surgical mask to graceful
figures at the forefront of hazy, lush
landscapes, the artist created the
varied body of work from his modern,
impressively organised studio in