Posthumous Art Exhibit Expands And Heals

Magnolia blossoms blooming outside the Ely Center of Contemporary Art on Trumbull Street added a welcoming touch to the opening reception for ​“Circling Lev: Artwork of Levni Sinanoğlu,” a new exhibit showcasing the work of a young, impactful, New Haven-based artist who died in his art studio at Erector Square almost two years ago. His legacy now is receiving a much overdue burnishing.

In addition to the works of K. (Karacabey) Levni Sinanoğlu, or Levni, as most called him, the exhibit features the work of some 13 ​“friends, colleagues, students, and collectors” — those who had a close association with the artist as expressed through the art they provided for the exhibit, but also through the personal essays that accompany most works in the show.

Those exhibiting artists include William Bailey, Gideon Bok, Turner Brooks, Paul Clabby, Steve DiGiovanni, Denzil Hurley, Clint Jukkala, Joshua Marsh, David Pease, Katy Schneider, Gina Ruggeri, Joel Werring, and Pawel Wojtasik. Curated by Debbie Hesse with Clint Jukkala and Pawel Wojtasik, the exhibit runs through May 24.

During and after the exhibit’s opening this past Saturday, artworks continued to be added as friends of the artist brought in pieces created by Sinanoğlu or works created as tributes to the artist. Debbie Hesse, the Ely Center’s gallery director and curator, welcomed the opportunity to expand the exhibit in response to the community’s growing interest in honoring Sinanoğlu.

“Lev connected on so many levels,” Hesse said. ​“I am only beginning to understand the numerous orbits he traveled in and the multitudes of people he touched. He navigated these worlds seamlessly and without judgement or hierarchy. It seems quite natural to organically fold in more artists who are part of Lev’s ever expanding circles.”

Sinanoğlu’s circle of influence included the many lives he touched through years of teaching art history and studio art classes at Hampshire College,Gateway Community College, Quinnipiac University, and the Yale School of Art (summer drawing classes).

One of the pieces brought in after the show’s opening was created by Sinanoğlu friend and painter Steven DiGiovanni. ​“The expanding circles around Lev is a notion translated both literally and spiritually in Steve’s painting,” said Hesse.

DiGiovanni, who described Sinanoğlu as a ​“raconteur and fluent free associator,” said the artist embraced the idea of synchronicity and the notion of parallel phenomena. A dense layering of elements, the use of realism and illusion, are part of the architecture of DiGiovanni’s imaginative form in The Great Metaphysician (titled after a De Chirico painting). The work incorporates symbols and forms used by Sinanoğlu, including bits of blue painters’ tape and push pins executed with trompe l’oeil virtuosity. Circles and spherical forms, common elements in Sinanoğlu paintings, are synthesized with an abstract structure that dissolves into Cubist planes at the form’s edges.

A shark, one of Sinanoğlu’s oft-used symbols, creates optical and spacial ambiguity beneath a strip of tape that appears to be tacked to the canvas. Human hands emerging from the compartmentalized structure of warm red tones were painted from a photo DiGiovanni took of Sinanoğlu.
​“Like the chair caning in Picasso’s oval, Cubist still life, Levni employs common objects — blue painter’s tape, straight pins, etc., to create doorways between object and illusion, physical and representational space,” wrote DiGiovanni, who has achieved similar effect in his homage to Sinanoğlu.

One of the more poignant aspects of the exhibit is a room (Gallery 3) devoted to Sinanoğlu’s personal studio collection of inspirational artifacts, found objects, books, small sculptures, and toys presented on several table tops referred to as ​“thinking tables.”

Paintings in various stages of completion informally rest in boxes or lean against walls as they might have in the artist’s studio.

The collection of items evoke Sinanoğlu’s presence and the things he valued, and in some cases, provide a physical connection to his metaphorical, even metaphysically inspired paintings.

For Hesse, the collection, and exhibit in general, is intended not only as an opportunity for friends and artists to connect with each other around their common connection to Sinanoğlu, but as a healing event for the arts community and all who continue to be affected by his legacy. Hesse said she created an email address for ​“folks that want to share their thoughts and artwork about Levni.”

It is particularly appropriate that the exhibit, which includes works from Sinanoğlu’s days as a student at Hampshire College and Yale and up to his untimely death in 2016, should be presented at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art. In an earlier iteration, the Ely Center was called the John Slade Ely House, headquarters for the New Haven Brush and Palette Club and an exhibition space for the New Haven Paint and Clay Club. For a period, Sinanoğlu worked at the Ely House in close association with Paul Clabby, the former gallery director and curator, helping to install exhibitions and performing various jobs supporting the gallery.

Clabby, who is included in the exhibition with his SOS video piece located in Gallery 2, was on hand for Saturday’s reception. He offered observations about Sinanoğlu’s extensive travels in the Middle East and the resulting influences he internalized: the geometry of Islamic art and architecture, Sufi mysticism that stresses a ​“personal connection to God — finding God in yourself,” as Clabby put it. ​“Levni was looking for a connection to God, but was not interested in organized religion,” said Clabby.

Cypress trees, a symbol of mourning often found in cemeteries or monasteries of the countries he visited, became a staple of Sinanoğlu’s symbolic imagery. Chairs and steps in profile, much like the hieroglyphs viewed in his travels, coexist with flying birds and luminous spherical forms in Sinanoğlu’s visionary mindscapes.

“Levni’s colors suggest the atmosphere of another world,” said Clabby.

Many who came to know Sinanoğlu experienced the joys of interacting with a person of exceptional insight and capacity: ​“Part of Sinanoğlu’s gift as an artist and teacher was his uncanny gift to make make connections between art, literature, philosophy, religion and everyday life” as noted by as Yale classmate and friend, Clint Jukkala, Dean of the School of Fine Arts-Penn Academy of Fine Arts. Sinanoğlu’s brilliance and penchant for engagement is widely acknowledged. Also acknowledged is the difficult, internal struggle he waged for years.

Pawel Wojtasik, a friend and co-student when Sinanoğlu was at Yale in the ​‘90s, and whose video, Dark Sun Breeze (Gallery 8) was made on a recommendation by Sinanoğlu, said that Sinanoğlu ​“gave us a picture of his inner world — the magical spaces he was conjuring and inhabiting and creating for himself to mask the demons raging inside.”

“Painting itself,” noted Wojtasik, ​“was a healing practice helping him to not only rise but transcend.” Wojtasik said that Sinanoğlu visited with him only a few days before his death. ​“He was struggling with addiction and not getting the help he needed.”

In ​“Dream Walker,” a poignant essay and tribute to Sinanoğlu by Daniel Shoklnik, the writer describes his encounter with Sinanoğlu a few weeks before his passing: ​“Levni Sinanoğlu was not a homeless man, but a painter at the tail-end of a troubled spiral. His excited, addled monologue was most likely a hint of the manic depression he shared with his late father. His twitching hand perhaps a symptom of alcohol withdrawal. But even in his last days, Levni’s Hippocratic kindness, his ​‘did you get it?’ humor, and his savant-like intellect shined through his troubles even as those troubles rose to claim him.”

Sinanoğlu friend and collector Kevin Charles Thomas, MD, who loaned a handful of important paintings to the exhibition, summed up what will most likely endure as Sinanoğlu’s legacy as a person.

“Levni was everybody’s friend,” he said, before elaborating further.

Counted among Sinanoğlu’s friends and represented in the exhibit with a character based still life painting is the renowned Kingman Brewster Professor Emeritus of Art at Yale, William Bailey. The figurative painter, whose work can be found in collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., said he taught Sinanoğlu in graduate school at Yale for one year.

It was a couple of years after that the two had studios at the Erector Square complex where Sinanoğlu would solicit reviews of his work by Bailey. ​“Every now and then Lev would call me and we would talk at Marjolaine’s (Pastry Shop) on State Street. Lev was a great talker — and a very interesting one. He had opinions about everything and I enjoyed his insights immensely. It was a terrible shock to learn of his death.”

Bailey, who described Sinanoğlu as a ​“promising young artist,” noted that his work had ​“elements that were abstract, figurative and symbolic and aspects that seemed decorative…. That is true of most serious artists’ work,” he said. While Bailey was unsure of the long-term legacy of Sinanoğlu’s work, he was quick to remark that ​“the depth of his commitment and seriousness as an artist was one of complete engagement.”

Judging by the hundreds who flowed through the opening reception Saturday, Sinanoğlu’s legacy and circle of influence as an artist is still expanding. For now, his works remain, brilliantly assembled and displayed at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, inviting viewers to explore the artist’s expansive vision and very big heart.

“Circling Lev: Artwork of Levni Sinanoğlu” runs through May 24 at Ely Center of Contemporary Art, 51 Trumbull St. The exhibition is free and open to the public on Wednesdays and Thursdays, 5 to 8 p.m., and Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m., and can be viewed by appointment.