Throughout the summer, x-ist presents the group exhibition “My Beautiful Mistakes!” featuring works by Esin Keskinoğlu, Pamir Yıldıran, and Sefa Karakuş.
The exhibition brings together the practices of three artists who approach the notion of “mistake” not merely as a deviation or flaw, but as a creative opening, an intellectual leap, and an aesthetic foundation. In their individual approaches, each artist embraces moments of rupture, absence, inconsistency, or distortion as opportunities for exploration and reconstruction.
“My Beautiful Mistakes!” invites the viewer to step away from the comfort of the complete and the premeditated, and into the intuitive aesthetics found in the imperfect, the contradictory, the erroneous, and the accidental.
Esin Keskinoğlu
Born in İzmir in 1978, Esin Keskinoğlu graduated top of her class in 2024 from Marmara University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Ceramics and Glass. Her conceptually driven ceramic-based works are multidimensional, merging layers of emotion and thought with aesthetic form.
In Keskinoğlu’s work, the “mistake” becomes a prerequisite for motion, transformation, and stepping out of inertia. Her pieces span from Newton’s cradle to fragile glass domes, from cracked clay to delicate porcelain—accepting mistakes not merely as flaws but elevating them as acts of courage and elements of a feminist stance. “Movement requires courage,” says the artist, constructing aesthetic order precisely at the point where things begin to break.
Pamir Yıldıran
Born in Mersin in 2001, Pamir Yıldıran is currently pursuing a double major in Painting and Graphic Design at Marmara University, Faculty of Fine Arts. Having participated in numerous national and international exhibitions, he was awarded “Young Artist of the Year” by the International Association of Plastic Arts in 2023.
Yıldıran’s works revolve around distorted spaces bathed in pastel hues, queer identities, childhood traumas, and fragmented memory. What initially appears festive and illusionary gradually evokes conflicting emotions in the viewer upon closer inspection.
“My past is like an unfinished painting,” he says, turning the very act of remembering into an aesthetic practice of reconstruction. In his work, the mistake is not just a deviation, but a deliberate distortion—an act of beautifying disruption.
Sefa Karakuş
Born in Istanbul in 1992, Sefa Karakuş began his art education at Avni Akyol Fine Arts High School in 2006 and completed his studies at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of Painting, in 2017. With numerous group exhibitions and awards to his name, he stands out as a prominent figure among the new generation of figurative artists.
Karakuş’s practice explores the aesthetic potential of the incomplete, the accidental, and the unresolved. Compositions built from worn-out toys, unfinished images, aged textures, and unconscious traces illustrate how something born of error can evolve into an entirely different order. Karakuş not only renders the mistake visible but places it at the core of a deconstructive process. Through the exhibition, he invites the audience to engage in a mode of perception guided by intellectual intuition, meandering among inconsistencies and discontinuities.