Stela Vasileva’s Construction Time is her first solo exhibition in Turkey, and the artist approaches construction as a phenomenon that goes far beyond a simple practice. Through a selection of drawings on paper and installations made of glass and iron, Vasileva examines the concept of construction as a perceptual and conceptual state within the context of seeing and feeling a constantly evolving space. Rather than presenting finished structures, she invites us to experience construction as an open-ended process of discovery by presenting fragments and intermittent moments. Thus, we witness a kind of meditation shaped by space and form on how structures gain meaning. In the heart of Istanbul, a city where cycles of demolition and reconstruction never cease, Construction Time reflects the city’s balance between permanence and transience. In a metropolis where tools and machines, like cranes, shape the daily soundscape, Vasileva’s works frame construction as a state of becoming.
At the heart of Vasileva’s practice is the abstraction of everyday spaces, and the artist draws inspiration from urban spaces such as workshops, storage areas, and construction sites. These spaces are not documented in the literal sense; instead, Vasileva extracts aspects of reality and recontextualizes them in simplified compositions. A staircase, an iron rod, or a figure drawn halfway while in motion is removed from its functional context and depicted within a new dialogue. The artist’s method of isolation and re-visioning gives ordinary materials a different existence. Vasileva erases the explicit narrative, bringing spatial perception to the fore and asking us to think about weight, balance, and intervals rather than a story. What emerges is a visual language that represents objects and figures held in balance, representing states of tension and suspension.
In the paintings, the void and white space are active elements rather than neutral backgrounds, and in Vasileva’s drawings, human figures or tools appear only temporarily and partially. When looking at a bent knee, a torso, a scaffold, or beams, we see these elements captured in their momentary movements and in fragments of objects on large white surfaces. The paper’s empty areas are loaded with meaning and function as structuring intervals that trigger the viewer’s gaze. These empty spaces bring a rhythm, a temporal pause that slows down the gaze. Here, perception emerges through presence and absence. The images will be completed in our minds, and the viewer must participate in constructing the artwork’s meaning. In this way, Vasileva’s use of emptiness is spatial and temporal, and the artist uses these intervals intuitively, allowing emptiness to contain time within the static image.
This sensitivity to intervals is also evident in the installations in the exhibition space, where Vasileva uses glass and iron to create scenes that are both solid and fragile at once. Glass, with its transparency and fragility, is paired with iron, with its solidity and structural weight. The two materials exist in a balance of mutual trust, with metal evoking architecture and glass capturing light. Vasileva also blurs the line between drawing and sculpture. On one hand, iron rods trace linear trajectories in the gallery space, creating planar pauses similar to the voids she uses in her drawings. In both productions, she relies on the materials and the viewer’s perceptual participation to complete the picture. Thus, the works become spatial drawings in their own right.
Construction Time interprets construction as a way of thinking and seeing. Vasileva’s critical and poetic perspective shows that every beam and line carries a potential for meaning. The exhibition embraces fragility and impermanence while also finding a kind of structure and clarity within them. There is a conceptual balance here between making and unmaking, and Vasileva’s work emerges as part of a broader discourse on space and change. Construction Time can therefore be read as both an individual statement and a reflection on the conditions of the world. By emphasizing states of formation, the exhibition invites us to find value in process and perception. In the gallery space, construction between lines and forms is perceived as a continuous construction of awareness. Viewers complete the works with the act of seeing, and thus the real structure of Construction Time is built. Curated by Firat Arapoglu
Construction Time, 2026, installation view, Collect Gallery, Istanbul