Freezing Time While Running: Hüseyin Kartal and “Yakalamaç” at Guga Contemporary

Remember playing tag as a child: that exact moment right before touching the shoulder of someone fleeing, that moment stretching out, those uncertain split seconds when your hand hangs in mid-air… Starting from this reflexive childhood game, Hüseyin Kartal pursues time, the body, and encounters with his new exhibition “Yakalamaç” (Tag), opening at Guga Contemporary.

On view from September 4 to 17, 2026, at the gallery on Boğazkesen Street in Beyoğlu, the exhibition focuses on the effort to hold onto a moment on the canvas surface right as it is about to vanish from sight, reaching far beyond the innocent game its name evokes.

A Continuous Movement Unfrozen on Canvas

On Kartal’s canvases, the body begins to speak where words end. Involuntary gestures of daily life that slip by unnoticed, playing animals, and fleeting encounters form the foundational raw material of this visual universe.

Removing time from its familiar linear track, the artist brings together different stages of the exact same movement on a single surface. Thus, the painting before us does not stand like a frozen photograph of a completed moment; it turns into a fluid interval of time where movement still continues.

The Pursuer, the Fleeting, and Shifting Roles

The atmosphere in the paintings does not surrender to a single emotion. While a cheerful and familiar sense of play is felt on one side, a slightly peculiar and uncanny tension reveals itself on the other. The boundaries between the pursuer and the pursued, the viewer and the viewed, or the one touching and the one pulling away constantly shift. Kartal reopens concepts of intimacy, distance, and memory for discussion through the fluidity of these roles.

The exhibition opening takes place on Friday evening, September 4, from 19:00 to 21:00. If your path leads toward Boğazkesen in early September, you can take a closer look at this rhythmic chase of movement and time!