The American Turkish Society is pleased to support the first U.S. exhibition of prominent Turkish artist Yuksel Arslan at The Drawing Center.

Yüksel Arslan: Visual Interpretations
April 18 – May 15, 2008

Yüksel Arslan (b. 1933, Istanbul, Turkey) has often been associated with the loosely-structured surrealist movement in Turkey and was affiliated with the intellectual circles of 1960s Paris that included Jean-Paul Sarte, André Breton, and Jean Dubuffet. For the past 60 years, Arslan has been mining the depths of the unconscious mind, bringing together Western and Eastern aesthetics and philosophy in finely wrought works that he calls Autoartures. Serial in format, the hundreds of drawings he has produced deal with subjects as varied as schizophrenia and the eroticism of de Sade, Bataille, and Artaud, as well as visual interpretations of artists, poets, writers, scientists, musicians, and philosophers that have influenced his thinking. Arslan’s working process includes the use of self-made and antique tools and the production of his own colors using ancient methods of combining raw pigments with his own saliva, blood, urine, and other organic materials like honey, earth, and egg whites. Though Arslan has exhibited extensively in Europe and is well-known in Turkey, this exhibition in the Drawing Room, curated by Executive Director Brett Littman, will be the first survey of his work in the United States.

We would like to invite our members and friends to a private gallery tour, led by the curator of the exhibition, Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center.

Tuesday, May 6, 6:00 - 7:00pm

The tour has a capacity of 20 people. Pre-registration is required. Tours are free and open to members and friends of The American Turkish Society and their guests; a donation of $25 is suggested to help support our arts & culture initiatives.

To become a member of The American Turkish Society, please visit our website at www.americanturkishsociety.org or contact us at 212.583.7614 or info@americanturkishsociety.org.

The American Turkish Society is proud to present A Discussion with Maureen Freely, author of Enlightenment
Moderated by Professor Sibel Erol, New York University

“A dark Conradian drama, set in a beautifully illuminated Istanbul, where the past is always with us.” - Orhan Pamuk

May 15, 2008
6:00-6:15pm Registration
6:16-7:00pm Discussion with Maureen Freely, moderated by Professor Sibel Erol, NYU
7:00-8:00pm Book Signing and Reception

Maureen Freely is a writer, translator, and professor at the University of Warwick in Bath, England. She was born in the United States and grew up in Istanbul, where her father has been a university professor since 1963. She was educated at Radcliffe College and has made her home in England for the last twenty-three years. The author of three works of nonfiction, Ms. Freely has been a regular contributor to the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent and the Sunday Times for two decades, writing on feminism, family, social policy, Turkish culture and politics, and contemporary literature. She is well-known for her translations of Snow (2004), Istanbul: Memories of a City (2005), The Black Book (2006), and Other Colors (2007), by the Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.

From the Publisher: In her new novel Enlightenment, Freely captures both the passion, distrust, and duplicitousness of life in Cold War Istanbul, and the complexities of modern life in contemporary Turkey. As an investigative journalist unravels the strange and politically-charged disappearance of an American woman who first came to Turkey in the 1960s, she discovers a heartbreaking history of first loves shattered and best friends betrayed. Enlightenment also entertains as a tense and complex thriller involving a retired secret service informer, a mysterious ‘trunk’ murder, and a group of young students embroiled in subterfuge. (Overlook Press/ Hardcover, $24.95 / ISBN: 978-1-59020-074-2 / May 13, 2008).

Space is limited. Pre-registration is strictly required. To register, please fill out attached form and fax or mail it to The American Turkish Society by Tuesday, May 13 at 5pm. For questions, please email info@americanturkishsociety.org

The American Turkish Society is a proud supporter of Moon and Stars Project's MayFest 2008.

Please see Moon and Stars Project's website for additional information about the festival program and to purchase tickets.