


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.