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Pi Artworks inaugurates its new Shoreditch space with Skin, a solo exhibition by Mehmet Ali Uysal.
At the centre of the exhibition is Uysal’s iconic intervention: a section of the gallery’s surface appears pinched and lifted by an oversized clothespin. The wall behaves like skin—stretched, compressed, and held under tension. This gesture anchors a wider presentation of works spanning sculpture, installation, and drawing, in which surfaces are repeatedly altered, opened, or displaced.
Uysal’s practice is defined by his direct engagement with the spaces he occupies. Working across architectural and environmental contexts, he treats surfaces as malleable rather than fixed—walls, structures, and ground are made to behave like an outer layer that can be manipulated. In related works such as the Peel series, sections of walls appear lifted or removed, exposing an imagined interior and disrupting the integrity of the built surface. His work operates through simple, precise, and often playful gestures that shift perception and alter how space is physically experienced.
Large-scale iterations of the Skin series have been realised internationally, including a major commission for Umeå European Capital of Culture 2014, alongside a number of significant public commissions. In 2023, Uysal presented a large-scale installation at Le Bon Marché, Paris.
Skin marks a key moment for Pi Artworks. The opening of its new Shoreditch space signals a focused expansion of the gallery’s programme.
Artist:
Mehmet Ali Uysal is an internationally recognised sculptor whose site-responsive practice examines how space is perceived, constructed, and experienced. Through subtle, precise interventions into architectural and environmental contexts, he destabilises the viewer’s sense of orientation, often treating built environments as if they were living, malleable bodies.
Uysal’s work is grounded in an understanding of space as something felt rather than fixed. As he states, “Space, as we perceive it, is an illusion. Our eyes only allow us to reconstitute reality in two dimensions, and it is through movement that we grasp the third one. Space is not really something we can see. We feel it.” This idea underpins his practice, where minimal gestures—pinching, lifting, or displacing architectural elements—produce a heightened awareness of physical and perceptual experience.
Working in close dialogue with each site, Uysal reveals space as active, unstable, and open to transformation. His installations do not simply occupy environments; they reconfigure them, inviting a more embodied and intuitive encounter with space.
6 Perseverance Works
London
E2 7NX
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