Kravets Wehby Gallery is pleased to announce Buket Savci’s solo exhibition, Beautiful Aliens. Please join us for the opening reception on Thursday, October 17, 2024, 6-8PM. In this new body of work, Buket’s worlds expand and intertwine.

Now that Buket has spent years growing her life in Brooklyn, she realizes New York City is made of survivalists. The level of resilience required for the human experience is greater here. As part of her practice, Buket yearns to see the good in people and paint them in an adoring light. For her sumptuous paintings, she gathers friends, friends of friends, and strangers and immortalizes a moment of careful interdependence. Her goal is to create a space where basic needs are met, and prejudice is forbidden. She asks them to wear bright colors and patterns to ward off negativity. Buket also asks participants to bring a something that comforts them, such as a stuffed animal, that becomes integral to the ecosystem of the pile. The spiral of people holds their dreams, hopes, and vulnerabilities while new connections are made.

When a brief earthquake recently struck New York City, it took her back to when she survived a devastating earthquake that caused death and destruction to Izmit, where her family lives. Buket has been in, and has witnessed, a population in survival mode from natural disaster. When presented with a short window of opportunity by way of green card lottery,Buket leapt. She spent formative, unfulfilling years as a landscape architect in Istanbul, so she moved to New York and pursued her lifelong aspiration to paint.

Her vivid paintings capture the personalities, styles, and stillness of her models. Dramatic lighting, patterns, tattoos, and jewelry emphasize the complexities of the city. Buketrelies on the kindness and open-mindedness of strangers for her process, all while bringing people together that would otherwise likely not meet.

Buket Savci is from Istanbul, TR and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. After arriving in New York City in 2006, she received a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from New York Academy of Art. Beautiful Alienswill be her second solo exhibition with the gallery.