Gülbin Ünlü's artistic practice celebrates the principle of the mash-up. In her interdisciplinary approach, which also includes collaborations with artists and the use of artificial intelligence (AI), she combines painting, photography, video, performance and music. Personal and collectively preserved memories play a central role in her work, with the underlying material being drawn from private and public archives. Ünlü developed a technique that creates a hybrid of painting and printing. To create new pictorial structures, she combines different pictorial levels by interweaving motifs and pictorial fragments from different sources and contexts. This approach allows her to work flexibly with different materials and on various painting surfaces. It also opens up her image production for the use in installation and sculptural and performative possibilities that transfer her method of layering disparate elements into one another into space. Ünlü’s working process can be categorized as the cultural practice of sampling. In a continuous reworking, she expands origins and overwrites them, connects different narrative lines and visualizes simultaneities, relationships, contexts and causalities. Ünlü’s works defy conventional categorization and classification. They manifest the complex conditions of a present that is characterized by fragmentation on an individual, social, political and cultural level.
Gülbin Ünlü lives and works in Munich, where she studied painting, drawing, sculpture and performance with Prof. Markus Oehlen and the guest professors John Jordan & Isabelle Fremeaux (Labofii), Simon Starling and Kim Noble at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) in Munich. She was awarded the Erwin and Gisela von Steiner Foundation Prize for her diploma in 2018. Since 2016, Ünlü has published books and music albums, most recently a monographic catalog published by Hammann von Mier Verlag. Her work has been exhibited at the Pinakothek der Moderne Munich in 2020 and the Berlinische Galerie in 2022, among others. She was awarded the Förderpreis für Bildende Kunst of the City of Munich in 2022 as well as the Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis in 2023.
Press
Bilder in Bodenhaltung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Jutta Czeguhn, 19.03.2021Vita
2012—2018
Studied Painting and Graphic with Prof. Markus Oehlen at the AdbK Munich
Studied with guest professors for Video, Performance, and Installation: Kim Noble, Simon Starling, John Jordan & Isabelle Fremeaux (Labofii)
2017
2:1 Research Scholarship (donated by Centrum für interdisziplinäre Studien/CX und SoNet)
2018
Diploma in Painting, Graphics, Sculpture with Prof. Markus Oehlen / AdbK Munich
Diploma award: Prize of the Erwin and Gisela von Steiner Foundation
2018
Bayerisches Atelierförderprogramm (2019/2020)
Prize of the Erwin and Gisela von Steiner Foundation (Diploma Prize)
2019
Project funding by the Erwin and Gisela von Steiner Foundation
Artist book funding by the Golart Foundation
2020
Bayerisches Atelierförderprogramm (2021/2022)
2021
Junge Kunst und neue Wege – Bavarian State Ministry of Education, Science and the Arts
Scholarship for Fine Arts, City of Munich
Catalogue funding (debutant funding) Berufsverband Bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler Landesverband Bayern e.V
2022
Förderpreis bildende Kunst der Landeshauptstadt München
2023
Scholarship from the Stiftung Kunstfonds (NeustartPLUS)
Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis
Selected Shows
2024
future is the winner – Jahn und Jahn, Munich
TAF (Türkisch-Armenische Freundschaft) – Münchner Kammerspiele
Passage – TIP Theorie in Practice, Munich
Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis Bildende Kunst – Galerie der Künstler*innen, Munich
Eissagungen – Sorry Square, Munich
Carrying the Earth to the Sky – Schillerstraße 38, Munich
Beyond the Bounds – Arcas Sanat Alacati, Izmir, Türkiye
2023
Transformationen. Shelter - unsere Schutz(t)räume – Cohaus Kloster Schlehdorf
Malso13 zeigt 90% – Kunstraum Leitershofen
Couple Goals – Space n.n., Munich
Werke in Fenstern – Fäden der Kunst, Leipzig
Gläserne Barrieren – Galerie im Saalbau, Berlin
Plakatkampagne 2023 – in cooperation with Residenztheater, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
2022
Klassenfragen – Berlinische Galerie, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin
Kritamon Oracle – easyupstream/Stiftung Federkiel/Kerkisecho, Samos
post-un – offspacemuseum, Munich
minds are magnets – Canal Street Research Association, New York
to the land – Perlacher Forest, Munich
Plakatkampagne 2022 – Pinakothek der Moderne in cooperation with Residenztheater Munich
Förderpreise 2022 – Lothringer13 Halle, Munich
Perspektiven 2022 – Platform München, Munich
on the road – PF38, Munich
2021
dÜstopia – Artothek München, Munich (solo)
ohne Titel – Kunstpavillon München (solo)
Kuli – Mauer, Cologne
etwaslaeuftfalsch #qualcosanonva – Triennale Milano, Milan
Alexander Kluge scheisse wer war denn noch dabei – Ruine München, Various Others, Munich
Zeki Müren - das ausgestellte Leben – Maison Zeki Müren, Lovaas Projects, Munich
Leihweise 2021 - Neuerwerbungen der Artothek – Artothek Munich
Lutz! blau, rot e capelli grassi – Galerie Lake, Oldenburg
SummerBreeze – Spoilerroom, Berlin
2020
Denkraum Deutschland II – Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Die ersten Jahre der Professionalität 39 – Galerie der Künstler, Munich
SCHANZENTISCH – XXXVIII, Munich
Blessed is the Machine – Architekturbüro Tokdemir, Munich
Performance-Gondel – Kunst im öffentlichen Raum
2019
Support your local Artist #1 – Lothringer13 Florida, Munich
Meze Evi – Museum Villa Stuck, Munich
Tacker – Galerie der Künstler, Munich
Freude – Galerie Britta von Rettberg, Munich
Freie Radikale – BBK, Munich
Wieder Sehen – Kunstarkaden, Munich
Schaustellung – Das Kapital, Berlin
2018
no stop non stop – Lothringer 13, Munich
akkord – Galerie Britta von Rettberg, Munich
Ortsangaben – Galerie FOE, Munich
Debütanten – MMA München
VKP. ok? – Lovelace, Munich
