Amicum

About Günay Shamsi

The Baku-born and, since 2015, Berlin-based artist enjoys pushing the limits of perception. Her images possess thoroughly mannerist characteristics – the ground and parts of the body repeatedly dissolve into bluish-yellow streaks, clouds… Read more

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Work Info

Who or what do we see when we gaze at an image? In Astro-Horse, Azerbaijani artist Günay Shamsi offers an interesting answer, thanks to a mirror sphere in the painting. Her paintings are delightfully surrealistic semantic machines that nevertheless touch the senses and are characterised by a delicate, immediately recognisable colour palette and painting style. Each asserts its own free existence and engages the viewer, culture and art history in a philosophical-painterly game.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The Baku-born and, since 2015, Berlin-based artist enjoys pushing the limits of perception. Her images possess thoroughly mannerist characteristics – the ground and parts of the body repeatedly dissolve into bluish-yellow streaks, clouds and fields of colour. Shamsi varies her themes but not her painting style, whose palette and ductus are characterised by typical and easily identifiable elements. The cream-like colours, constantly contrasted by dark tones of grey and realistically rendered details, are truly amazing, as if parts of the image have been transformed into molten ice cream! Shamsi gives the space free rein, confuses our usual routines and ways of seeing, emphasises two-dimensionality and accentuates the depicted scenes through ellipses and omissions.

Astro-Horse is a perfect example: a splendidly shimmering horse wearing a flexible astronaut’s helmet and gazing into a floating mirror sphere in which we can see a horse’s head without a helmet looking at us. We would not be wrong in pointing out that, in this way, the picture’s virtual viewer – meaning us – is indirectly proclaimed a horse.

Shamsi chooses her titles carefully, often in Latin, in order to give her works a sense of sophistication. She imbues her art with adventures as well as with deeper mysteries and cultural meaning. There are clear references to art history and classical surrealist modernism, but at the same time she is constantly reworking its themes in a highly original manner. In fact, with its unique questions of perception, her Astro-Horse recalls one of the classics of the early modern relationship between image and viewer, one that many academics and intellectuals have attempted to analyse: Diego Velázquez’s courtly painting Las Meninas.

Stephan Reisner

VITA

2003-2007	Berufsfachschule für Malerei «A. AsimZade» bei der Aserbeidschanischen Kunstakademie
2007-2011	Studium der Bühnenmalerei an der Aserbaidschanischen Staatlichen Universität für Kultur und Kunst. Diplom mit Auszeichnung
2015-2018	Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin, Studien gang Freie Kunst / Bildhauerei bei Prof. Else Gabriel. Diplom mit Auszeichnung
2018-2020	Meisterschülerin, bei Prof. Albrecht Schäfer und Prof. Else Gabriel an der Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin

Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

2022	Exhibition "Frack, Cut, Smoking - Stylish from the evening reception to the German Bundestag ́ ́ for the company Cut For You, Berlin Aserbaidschanischen Kulturhauses Khari Bülbül e.V., Hotel Waldorf Astoria, Berlin
2014	Adam & Eva, Ardes Galerie, Berlin
2009	Role Models - Women Daring to Change, Women's Association for Rational Development, Baku, Azerbaijan

Group Exhibitions

2022	Discovery Art Fair Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main Weihnachtsausstellung 2022 der Stiftung Starke, Löwenpalais, Berlin UN PEZZO DI ME, Transform Galerie, Berlin
2021	21 Expressions, Online exhibition, organized by Faculty of Fine Art, National Academy of Arts, Culture and Heritage (ASWARA), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia und ArtFort, Indien Die Kulturelle Luftbrücke, Kühlhaus, Berlin
2020	Jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne, Transform studio & Galerie, Berlin
2019	Artistic meetings, Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin – Familienzentrum ZION, The New Synagogue, Berlin Weihnachtsausstellung 2019 der Stiftung Starke, Löwenpalais, Berlin
2018	Caspian Art Wave, gallery Resonance, Plovdiv, Bulgaria Defying Currents, Abschlussausstellung der Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin, Prof. Else Gabriel SURREAL GARDENS between Baku and Berlin, ArtStudio Maria Wirth, Berlin
2017	Aserbaidschan trifft Bulgarien in Berlin, Galerie Berlin Baku, Berlin Worpswede Price, AUTO / MACHT / MOBILITÄT, PS. Speicher, Einbeck, Deutschland Granatapfel und Feuerberg, Contemporary Azerbaijani Art, Kunststation Kleinsassen, Hessen Preisträgerin des Malwettbewerbs, Museum FLUXUS+, Potsdam Artrium, THE HAUS Berlin Art Bang, Berlin
2016	Aserbaidschan trifft Japan in Berlin, Galerie Berlin Baku, Berlin Academy of Contemporary Art, Creative Writing with Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin, Tromsø, Norway
2012	Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France Grand Tournoi de Chevalerie, Normandie, France Blue Water, Four Seasons Hotel, Baku, Azerbaijan
2010	United Buddy Bears Show, Berlin, mit Ali Shamsi
2008	1st place of the exhibition on the occasion of the 85th birthday of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic H. Aliyev