…Some said the wall was built by Bulgarians, some said it was the work of those certain powers…There was a wall in the city. What was going on on the other side? Everybody was confused and curious…

Zilberman Gallery–Berlin is pleased to present Istanbul based artist Antonio Cosentino’s show Summer was a Beautiful Day. The exhibition opening will take place on February 8, 2018 at 6 p.m and the Press Preview at 11 a.m.

Since the 1990s, Istanbul based artist Antonio Cosentino has been interested in the subculture and architectural developments; the uncanny destructions and the metamor-phosis of the city of Istanbul. Many of Cosentino’s works look at historical events from a humorous perspective to create fictitious arrangements that fold different stories back on one another. Dazzling arrays of techniques contain larger political, historical and philosophical questions.

Influenced by the history of Berlin as a divided city, the artist imagines a wall erected in one night in the city of Istanbul—or is it somewhere else? In his speculative fiction story Summer Was a Beautiful Day, not only words but also objects, installations, drawings, paintings and a map merge to tell the narrative in chapters. Maps, urban models and small objects such as tin toys, soda bottle caps, albums that Cosentino collected during his residency at Zilberman Gallery Berlin’s artist-in-residence program in the summer of 2017, become the tools of storytelling for the narrator-protagonist. The collected materi-al, with the influence of the story, turned into artworks such as the tin 3D model Tuz (2017) or the charcoal drawing Hiro (2017).

Antonio Cosentino graduated from the Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University in 1994. He founded the art initiative Hafriyat with Hakan Gürsoytrak and Mustafa Pancar in 1996. His recent exhibitions include HARBOR (Is-tanbul Modern, Istanbul, 2017); boxes of cigarettes and whisky all over the sea, ferâre, my love (Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul, 2016); Istanbul, Passion, Joy, Fury (curators: Hou Hanru, Ceren Erdem, Elena Motisi and Donatella Saroli, MAXXI National 21st Century Arts Museum, Italy, 2015); Mom I’m Going Out to Pour Some Concrete (with Extra-struggle, Studio-X, Istanbul, 2015); Escape from Marmara Sea: The Stelyanos Hrisopu-los (Salt Ulus, Ankara, 2015); Departure Marmara Sea (Bergsen & Bergsen, Istanbul, 2013) and Tin City (Külah, Istanbul, 2013). Having participated in numerous exhibitions both in Turkey and abroad, Cosentino contributed works to Spare Time, Great Work (Platform 3, Munich, 2011), and Tactics of Invisibility (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Con-temporary, Vienna; Tanas, Berlin; ARTER, Istanbul, 2010-2011) with the collective Haf-riyat. The artist lives and works in Istanbul.