Labirent Sanat is hosting Nermin Ülker’s solo exhibition titled “The Eye's Lost Hollow” between February 21 and March 28, 2026. Comprising the artist's recent works, the exhibition explores, on an ontological and spatial plane, how the concept of "home" has ceased to be a shelter during the modernization process and transformed into an inaccessible object of desire.
In an anthropological context, the hearth, which was the center of the home in ancient times, is considered a cosmic focal point where the community gathered, narratives were passed down, and continuity was established. With modernization, this center becomes invisible; the fire (hearth) is absorbed into technical systems, and the home ceases to be a cosmic whole, turning into a functional residential unit. Thus, as the inner integrity of the space dissolves, humanity's mode of being-in-the-world undergoes a transformation as well. A home is no longer merely a place being lived in; it is an object of desire coded as a guarantee of security, status, and the future. However, this desire is often postponed. For the modern subject, homelessness is not merely spatial, but existential.
“The Eye's Lost Hollow” investigates the spatial equivalent of this loss. The hollow, transparent, and folded steel constructions featured in the exhibition evoke familiar architectural forms while suspending their protective and enclosing qualities. Nermin Ülker’s sculptures are defined by void rather than mass; the material recedes, the structure lightens and becomes permeable. The resulting forms appear as volumes that were once full but are now abandoned. When the viewer encounters these structures, they perceive them not as objects, but as a space of bodily experience.
Countering the traditional understanding of sculpture built upon fullness, the artist’s practice explores the forms of absence and potential. The structures resist completion; they draw boundaries but do not close. This situation consciously suspends Gestalt theory, which defines perception's tendency to mentally complete missing forms. The viewer confronts a void every single time; the gaze cannot find a center to settle upon. “The Eye's Lost Hollow” is the precise name of this state of suspension.
The exhibition also engages in a dialogue with intellectual approaches that define the home as a space of dreaming and remembering. However, the home is presented here neither as a refuge left in the past nor as a goal to be reached in the future. The home emerges as a void that carries the modern subject's desire but never satisfies it. The familiar returns; yet it is no longer inhabitable.
Rather than producing architecture, Ülker’s sculptures stage the retreat of architecture. The function of sheltering is suspended; all that remains is a threshold, a transition area. As the viewer wanders through the exhibition space, they physically experience the tension created by the void. Thus, the space turns into a laboratory that is not only seen but also moved within, gotten lost in, and repositioned.
“The Eye's Lost Hollow” makes visible the ontological homelessness that arises from the home turning into an object of desire in the modern world. The void here is not a lack; it is a threshold where perception, memory, and desire are activated. The exhibition invites the viewer to realize how they see, rather than what they think they see.
Nermin Ülker’s exhibition takes its inspiration from Sema Kaygusuz’s essay titled “The Eye's Lost Hollow,” featured in her book The Tree Between Us (Aramızdaki Ağaç). Kaygusuz’s essay emphasizes that it is the mind that completes the flawed and incomplete structure of the eye; however, this completion also bears an ethical responsibility. Seeing is not merely a physiological act, but an ethical choice regarding how the mind constructs the world. Nermin Ülker’s void-defined sculptures step in precisely at this point. Through forms where the gaze cannot settle and the mind struggles to complete, she invites the viewer to confront their own way of seeing. "The Eye's Lost Hollow" invites the viewer to experience this ethical threshold appearing at the limit of seeing. The exhibition can be visited at Labirent Sanat until March 28, 2026.