KEVIN FRANCIS GRAY: PİLEVNELİ | DOLAPDERE

From April 24 to June 21, 2025, PİLEVNELİ is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Türkiye by Irish artist Kevin Francis Gray. Showcasing a compelling selection of his work, the presentation celebrates abstraction, figuration, and portraiture through dynamic sculptural compositions, tracing the evolution of Gray’s artistic language in recent years. 

Renowned contemporary sculptor Kevin Francis Gray reinterprets the historical legacy of Italian marble through a contemporary lens, merging classical modelling, casting, and carving techniques with a deeply expressive, handcrafted approach. By transcending the inherent hardness and stillness of marble, he transforms the material into fluid and emotive compositions. Spanning two floors, the exhibition features works from his Family and Gestural Works Series, alongside Fragile Heads Series, a new body of work inspired by Gray’s recent travels in Türkiye. 

The Family Series groups together large-, medium-, and small-scale abstract sculptures in various shades of white marble, devoted to the intricate bonds of kinship. Works such as Rising Father, Mother and Child, Son Dancing, Reposing Mother and Reclining Mother, embrace the complexities of familial connections - the sense of fulfillment and uncertainty, strength and vulnerability, unity and solitude. These emotional dualities are rendered in compositions that are at once delicate and monumental. Beyond personal reflection, the series engages with broader societal themes, gently probing family structures, gender codes, and the individual’s relationship with their social environment.

Building on themes from his earlier works - material dynamism, the reduction of form, and the interplay of deconstruction and reassemblement - Gray refines these approaches in the Family Series. Here, the human body is suggested through metonymic forms, with facial features, limbs, and torsos dissolving into elemental, abstracted configurations. Rather than erasing figuration, Gray distills it to its essence, allowing human features and familial roles to emerge in a universal, timeless language. The sculptures embody a delicate balance, where the dynamic interplay of individual parts sustains a lingering sense of the human form. Describing this series as “an artistic open-heart surgery of personal experiences,” Gray lays bare the vulnerability, resilience, and ever-shifting nature of familial bonds.

In his Gestural Works Series, including Ceridwen Seated, Young Janus, Bust of Aoife’s Son, and Ulster Boy (Maquette), Gray intertwines historical and mythological narratives with contemporary forms. As seen in Young God Standing, the artist moves away from traditional facial depictions and reimagines the entire body as a fluid marble figure. The surface of each sculpture retains the artist’s touch, with its fullest expression revealed in the Marble Panels, preserving the gestural energy of the original modeling process. At times, the forms appear spontaneous and vigorous, while at other moments, they flow with a smooth grace, embodying an ongoing sense of transformation. This approach underscores Gray’s continuous exploration of materiality, movement, and emotional resonance within his artistic journey. By designing custom steel or wooden bases for each piece, Gray eliminates the traditional separation between sculpture and pedestal, integrating both elements into a unified sculptural entity.

A highlight of the exhibition is the Fragile Heads Series, a collection of colourful porcelain works inspired by the İznik ceramics that Gray encountered during his recent visit to Istanbul. The artist conceives these works as an homage to the city - a way to give back and celebrate the place from which he drew inspiration, reshaping his admiration and gratitude for Türkiye into a cultural exchange that bridges past and present. Each porcelain head, signed by delicate cracks and subtle openings, alludes to the fragility of human experience, spanning personal struggles and global upheavals. These imperfections create a dynamic tension between vulnerability and resilience. The fissures, rather than diminishing the form, suggest that even in moments of rupture, there is an ongoing process of change and continuity. Fragile works for fragile times.

All the works in the exhibition are shaped by the integrity and delicate balance of their composition. The interaction between solid forms and voids, along with the simultaneity of angles and perspectives, creates a dynamic structure that unfolds and reveals itself as viewers encircle it - like a spatial accordion, expanding and contracting. In its entirety, the exhibition offers a profound meditation on transformation - of material, of form, and of the human condition itself. Rooted in centuries-old sculptural traditions yet boldly contemporary, Gray’s practice continues to carve new paths within the language of sculpture, prompting reflection on the impermanence of the physical and the enduring resonance of human connection.