Deniz Alt

In his art Deniz Alt deals with the actuality of history. As a German-Turkish artist with Armenian roots, he deals in his painting with coming to terms with the past and points out that this only works by remembering and not by forgetting. Deniz Alt's art is thus highly up-to-date in social discourse.

In his art he offers safe places for collective memory and thus also for the identity of our society. In mnemonics, emotionally linked architectures in particular form important places in which memories can be run off visually. In his work Das Lindenblütenschlösschen (2020), the Beylerbeyi Palace (from 1861) depicted here symbolizes avant-gardism and open-mindedness. Located in the middle of the city of Istanbul, which was built on two continents, this palace was the first step towards cultural exchange between the Ottoman Empire and Europe. Years later, the oldest bridge spanning the strait connecting Asia with Europe was built. This 1.5-kilometre-long Bosporus Bridge (today Boğaz Köprüsü) enabled a path between different lifestyles and cultures - between European and Asian imaginary worlds. And so Deniz Alt, with his art, also builds a bridge to our present, in which memories form our identity as a global society.

Deniz Alt was born in Aschaffenburg in 1978. He studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt from 1999 to 2005 with Peter Angermann, Michael Krebber and Christa Näher. His works are responses to a complex world and to a trivialization of the culture of memory by refreshing our past in his art.