PRIMA MATERIA

Yunus Aras’ first solo exhibition PRIMA MATERIA will be on view at İMALAT-HANE’s İMÇ Project Space between September 5 – October 5, 2025.

Bringing together the artist’s new works produced with the support of İMALAT-HANE, the exhibition takes as its starting point the Oltu Council Government, established in Erzurum’s Oltu district a hundred years ago and existing only for a few months. Positioned between the Caucasus and Anatolia, this small republic was born out of scarcity and soon disappeared in the shadows of history. *PRIMA MATERIA* questions what kind of cultural legacy this state might have left behind had it survived; constructing new objects, traces, and meanings from a history that never fully came into being.

Working with materials such as paper, lead casting, and brass, Aras creates works that appear both as though they belong to the past and as if they bear a timeless quality. Through asemic writing forms, unfinished structures, and fictional cultural objects, he invites viewers to contemplate the possibilities of a history that never took place.

The works, produced during the artist’s fifteen-month residency at İMALAT-HANE’s Project Space, transform into narratives that emerge not from the linear flow of history but from alternative possibilities. Asemic signs evolve into symbols resembling ancient alphabets yet belonging to no language. Imaginary cultural objects resemble archaeological artifacts, but instead appear as remnants of the future or unfinished forms. Burn marks, lines, and recurring motifs construct imaginary geographies that convey impressions of landscapes that never existed.

PRIMA MATERIA offers an imagined cultural heritage that oscillates between past and future, rooted in a history that never came into being.

About Yunus Aras
Yunus Aras (b. 1999, Istanbul) lives and works in Istanbul. He graduated from the Painting Department of Marmara University’s Faculty of Fine Arts. In his practice, Aras explores historical moments of rupture and alternative cultural possibilities. Emphasizing a sense of timelessness and incompleteness in his relationship with material, he employs lead casting, brass, and paper to produce forms that seem to belong both to the past and to the future. Through unfinished structures and fictional objects, his works propose alternatives to the linear flow of history, creating traces that resemble archaeological finds yet appear to belong to an indeterminate culture.
His first solo exhibition, PRIMA MATERIA, opens at İMALAT-HANE, İMÇ Project Space in 2025. Selected group exhibitions include: 9th Çanakkale Biennial: Leaving to Time (2024), Mahal Sanat, Çanakkale; Run of Luck (2023), FreyaALT, Istanbul; Variations of a Fundamental Motif (2022), Kiralık Depo, Istanbul; and İ ME CE 2.0 (2021), Barın Han, Istanbul.