NECDET KIRIMSOY EXHIBITION

Kocaev


NECDET KIRIMSOY EXHIBITION

Permanenet Exhibition



The precious works of Necdet Kırımsoy, who spent the greater part of his life using natural and industrial stones to sculpt unique jewelry pierces are being exhibited in the Kocaev ‘’Müzeoda’’ exhibition space.

Understanding their artistic importance, Mehmet Pir personally purchased the collected works of Kırımsoy, who died in 2018, and they are being preserved and displayed in a special area within the mansion.

An architect, sculptor, and jewelry designer, Kirimsoy, who died at the age of 84, preferred to describe himself as a “lithoman” (lover of stones). His passion was to collect stones from every corner of Turkey and then to imbue these stones with new significance and spirit. He did his best and most prolific work here in his home in Datça Reşadiye, also joined by the efforts of his talented wife Doris.

Necdet Kırımsoy

Architect, Sculptor, Jewelry Designer…
He was born in 1934 in Istanbul as the family’s first child to be born in present day Turkey. When the family emigrated from Crimea, they first settled in Istanbul and then moved to Ankara where Kırımsoy completed his elementary and secondary studies. Following his graduation in 1957 from the Architecture Department of the Istanbul State Architecture and Engineering Academy (present day Yıldız Teknik), he worked until 1963 as a freelance architect. He next worked for two and half years as a designer architect at the Marcus Diener Workshop (Basel, Switzerland). In 1966 he married Doris and the couple had three daughters, Canan, Deniz and Emrah.

Following his return to Turkey with his wife in 1966 he worked as a freelance architect for a while and then entered the construction sector. His weakness for chemistry next led him to founding a company that for 20 years specialized in what he called “painting work,” while others termed his efforts as “corrosion engineering.” He specialized in chemical corrosion up to 1994 when he “retired” and started dedicating himself to pebbles.
His specialization (preservation of acidic and basic environments, epoxy and ceramics resistant to acid with furan plaster, the cutting of coating elements etc.) became a media that allowed him to breathe life into the pebbles he collected. As he saw it, pebbles communicate with us through their shapes, colors and textures. He saw his task as one of injecting additional meanings to these stones, whether abstract or mystical, thus expanding the personal narratives of the stones. At other times he used his stones to create geometric shapes, thus giving a nod to the region’s traditional art forms.

His first works were done by creating a variety of color combinations as he attached pebbles onto specially designed wires. Following this, he created his first sculptures by combining natural stones in twos or threes (sticking or thrusting). He then expanded his methods as he began to employ cutting, polishing, drawing and chipping techniques. In all, he created around 400 works, the smallest of which are around 2-3 cm, and the biggest 35-40 cm. The main characteristic of his sculptures, apart a few of a geometric nature, is that no works are identical. This is particularly evident in his statues, all of which have faces reflecting different expressions.

Kocaev