Image: David Hockney in his studio, Paris 1975. Photograph: Dmitri Kasterine, Camera Press London.

The works of David Hockney, who is considered one of the most significant and creative artists of our time, are exhibited in Turkey for the first time with the exhibition The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 hosted by the Sakıp Sabancı Museum. The exhibition, which comprises the iPad paintings that he produced at his house in Normandy during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic; hosts events that shed light on the art of Hockney, who has been drawing with iPhone and iPad since the 2000s and has always searched for new technologies and methods throughout his long career. Assoc. Dr. Seda Yavuz, who works in the fields of modernism, feminist theories in art, history of sculpture and contemporary art, will deliver a conference talk titled ‘Transcending the Possibilities of Representation: David Hockney’ as part of the exhibition.

The conference talk will focus on Hockey’s images that challenge the possibilities of representation. It will also deal with the artist’s different phases in which he has developed a timely language of limitless material choice and insistent naturalistic depiction. In the 1960s, when the centre of art shifted to America and the wounds of the Second World War began to heal, the object and figure made a quick introduction to the colourful and striking world of reproduced reality, over a period in which the Abstract Expressionists completely broke away from the object and revealed their existence with the traces they left on the canvas. After receiving his master's degree from the Royal College of Art with a gold medal in 1962, David Hockney became a registered draftsman and made a name for himself in a short time through his innovative paintings. After he settled in America in 1963, his paintings, in which he used urban elements and homoerotic images, developed into psychologically and emotionally charged pieces. Maintaining his versatile production with different techniques today, the artist has produced more than 200 paintings with iPad during the pandemic process.

The event will be held in Turkish. Registration required.