Ali Acerol
Past Artist In Residence
2001

The outdoors brought in, for mixed media sculptor Ali Acerol builds commonplace objects out of brick. This Turkish artist educated at CalArts (1975) plays with contradictions and tensions, flipping the viewer’s expectations upside-down. He wrote the autobiographical book, Ali Acerol: Three-story Man in a One-story Town, in 2006. For his residency at 18th Street Arts Center, Ali Acerol made a set of furniture out of brick and mortar. Entitled, “Oh, It’s like owning property in Constantinople,” three chairs surround a small table in a welcoming fashion. For “Venus de Milo,” the artist references the famous painting in a sculpture of a woman’s torso made of brick. Why brick? Acerol says he likes to flirt with architecture by working with brick. The material also has a humble quality he enjoys using: it belongs to no certain class or culture, and so is more universal than marble or granite. After crafting the basic shape of his design, he then chisels the edges smooth to give his pieces a weathered look. He also draws nonsense maps for the show, “This is not a Map,” using mixed media on paper.