How did you come to open Oktemaykut Gallery?
Tankut: Both of us dealt with art and worked in this field ultimately with the idea of launching our own gallery. Tankut opened the gallery on his own at the beginning and then we became partners not before too long.
Is art your purpose in life?
Doğa: No, but it’s what I want to live with.
Tankut: Closest thing that I have as a purpose.
Which young artists do you consider being the most influential?
Doga: Can Altay
Tankut: Elif Boyner
Instagram & art? Your opinions?
Doğa: Instagram is fun but it’s no biggie. Sometimes it’s nice to quickly and easily reach the art related photos.
Tankut: I enjoy being able to access a great deal of contemporary art through Instagram.
Favourite instagram sensation when it comes to art?
Doğa: Ai Weiwei’s photo with his new passport occurs to me.
Tankut: I like David Shrigley’s account a lot. Peter Shear is a great painter that I have come to know thanks to Instagram.
Greatest ever living artist?
Doğa: I don’t have such a hero/ine. I have a tendency to talk about old names when the question contains “ever living”; such as Richard Serra, Kounellis… Yoko Ono?
Tankut: Sophie Calle
Most prominent art piece in your minds?
Doğa: I saw Maman by Louise Bourgeois during my college years. I hadn’t spent so much time in front of one artwork until then.
Tankut: Arshile Gorky’s The Liver is the Cock’s Comb. Especially after I suddenly realized its Turkish translation and that Gorky had named it after its Turkish meaning…
Anish Kapoor has said that he has nothing to say as an artist….
Doğa: Sometimes I also think that he has not much to say.
Tankut: Ingmar Bergman said it before, and probably many others as well. I mostly feel speechless about good art.
The bar or cafe in Istanbul to mix for an art crowd?
Doğa: Asmalı Cavit.
Tankut: Asmalı Cavit and Şimdi in Asmalımescit. Lucca, for where not to…
Art gallery?
Doğa: SALT venues with their cinema, library and Robinson Crusoe as well as the shows they exhibit.
Tankut: Pera Museum is another favorite spot, though our generation tends to skip it mostly.