Mehmet Ali Uysal

Mehmet Ali Uysal (b. 1976, Mersin) lives and works in Paris. He is an internationally recognised sculptor known for site-responsive installations that intervene directly into architectural and environmental topographies. His work explores how space is perceived and experienced, often treating built environments as if they were living, malleable bodies.

Uysal is best known for his Skin series, in which surfaces—whether walls, buildings, or ground—are stretched, compressed, or displaced through minimal yet precise interventions. In these works, architecture behaves like an outer layer: pinched, pulled, or held under tension, as if it possessed physical sensitivity. The effect is immediate yet quietly disorienting, shifting the viewer’s sense of stability and orientation. Large-scale iterations of Skin have been realised internationally, including a major commission for the Umeå European Capital of Culture 2014, alongside significant public commissions.

Across his broader practice, Uysal continues to work with architecture as both boundary and material. In the Peel series, walls appear lifted, folded, or partially removed, exposing an imagined interior and suggesting that built space is layered rather than fixed. In works such as Suspended, elements that typically stabilise the display of art—such as picture frames—are distorted and reconfigured, shifting from functional objects into sculptural forms. Through these gestures, Uysal subtly disrupts the conventions of exhibition-making and the assumed neutrality of the gallery space.

His approach is grounded in a sustained interest in space as something active rather than static. Uysal often draws parallels between architecture and the body, where surfaces function as a kind of skin and internal systems suggest hidden structures beneath. His installations engage the viewer physically, as perception shifts through movement and proximity. While conceptually precise, his works retain a quiet playfulness, relying on simple, unexpected gestures to produce moments of visual surprise.

Uysal’s projects are developed in close dialogue with their sites, and their meaning is shaped by context. In 2017, as part of Capadox, a simple paper boat assumed a monumental, almost mythic presence within the volcanic rock formations of Uçhisar Castle. In 2023, at Le Bon Marché, Paris, he presented a large-scale installation of suspended iceberg forms, creating the impression of a submerged environment and reflecting on consumption and environmental change. At the French Consulate in Ankara, brightly coloured paper boats appeared partially submerged within the lawn, transforming the garden into an illusory sea—an understated reflection on rising waters and climate change. These works demonstrate how his interventions do not simply occupy space, but transform it.

Uysal studied architecture and urban planning at Middle East Technical University, followed by PhD studies in sculpture at Hacettepe University. In 2008, he participated in an exchange program at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Bourges. This trajectory—from planning to intervention—remains central to his practice, where architecture is treated as a mutable system open to transformation.