Gunay Shamsi

From Baku, Azerbaijan
Has been living and working in Berlin since 2015

Education

1991–1998 Music school, focus on piano

2007–2011 Studied stage painting at the Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts Diploma with distinction

2015–2018 Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin, Free Art/ Sculpture course of studies with Prof. Else Gabriel, diploma with distinction

2018–2020 Master student with Prof. Albrecht Schäfer and Prof. Else Gabriel at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin

Jobrelated internships in restoration and conservation (frescoes, painting, ceramics) as well as printmaking (lithography, etching)

Honors and Awards

2010–2012 Presidential Scholarship, Scholarship for Painting(Association of Azerbaijani Artists)

2010 Award of the German Azerbaijani Society (Deutsch Aserbaidschanische Gesellschafte.V.) for contributions to the furthering of GermanAzerbaijani cultural relations

2011 Best young painter of Azerbaijan (Ministry of Youth the Republic of Azerbaijan)

2017 MuseumFLUXUS+, Potsdam, Germany (winner of the painting competition)

Since 2023 Lumas (Signed & Limited Art Editions)

Since 2024 the painting´´Diplomatie II´´ is in the museum’s collection: Baku Museum of Modern Art MoMa (Azerbaijani: Bakı müasir incəsənət muzeyi)

Group Exhibitions

2025 ́ ́Black, Red & Gold ́ ́ Galerie Rosebud Contemporary, New York

2025Female Art Week Berlin

2024 ´´Christmas Exhibition of the Starke Foundation´´ Löwenpalais, Berlin

2022 ´´DISCOVERY ART FAIR FRANKFURT´´ Frankfurt am Main

2021 ´´21 EXPRESSIONS´´organized by the Faculty of Fine Art, National Academy of Arts, Culture and Heritage (ASWARA), Kuala Lumpur, MALASIA and ArtFort INDIA

2021 ´´Die Kulturelle Luftbrücke´´ Kühlhaus Berlin

2019 Artistic meetings. Organizer: Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin – Familienzentrum ZION. The New Synagogue, Berlin

2018 ´´Caspian Art Wave´´ gallery Resonance, Plovdiv, Bulgaria

2016 Academy of Contemporary Art, Tromsø, Norway

2012 ´´CITE INTERNATIONALE DES ARTS. PARIS´´ Paris, France

2012 ´´GRAND TOURNOI DE CHEVALERIE´´ Normandy, France

Solo Exhibitions

2023 Art presentation with a lecture by Dr. Michael F. Feldkamp on the topic: ´´Adenauer, the Allies, and the Basic Law´´ Rotary International Berlin

2022 Presentation of my paintings with the support of the Azerbaijani Cultural Center ´´Khari Bülbül e.V. ´´ at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Berlin.

2014 ´´Adam & Eve´´ Ardes Gallery, Berlin

2009 ROLE MODELS, Women Daring to Change. ´´WOMEN’S ASSOCIATIONFORRATIONAL DEVELOPMENT´´ (WARD) Baku, Azerbaijan

Philo-sur-realism

Many artists are extroverted, open and at the same time highly sensitive. They have to be! They want and need to express their art, whether as painters on canvas, writers on paper or actors on stage or in front of a film camera.

We have to assume a special sensitivity in painters. They take in their surroundings with alert eyes and are able to capture impressions, moods and even smells and sounds in a picture. As contradictory as it sounds, they also visualise things that cannot be seen at all! Here, artists appeal to our socalled mental cinema! Painters interpret and alienate when they immortalise their impressions in a picture.

Art conveys meaning. And this is especially true of Günay Shamsi’s art.

She unites different content areas (or themes) and tech niques. Many of her works are characterised by the merging of painting and sculpture. By using different materials, her paintings inevitably become objects and threedimensional spaces of experience. Optical illusions occur, which are additionally intensified by light and colour. The viewer has to look closely to grasp Günay Shamsi’s art and access
it intellectually. Günay Shamsi mounts other, smaller canvases on top of canvases. Rooms are left behind when, as it were, coloured flames burst out of the picture frame or coloured liquids virtually flow out of the canvas.

Leaving rooms?! This is also to be understood symbolically: Günay Shamsi’s art does not adhere to the guidelines and regulations implied by a canvas. Here her art is experimen tal. But Günay does not experiment. Her only seemingly careless handling of colours as well as materials that do not usually go together is highly professional.

Günay Shamsi is not a crossover artist, rather she trans gresses borders. This sounds provocative, but Günay Shamsi’s art is conciliatory. Günay Shamsi combines and reconciles nature and culture in her works and paintings. The result is her own unmistakable style. Few artists develop a style that is only associated with their name. Günay Shamsi seems to have already achieved this. She does not imitate. She is not an epigone.

Just look at the cover of this catalogue. It is a real master piece and perhaps one of her most intimate paintings to date. It is called „Initium novum“. An artist from Azerbaijan, whose mother tongues are Azerbaijani and Russian, lives and works in Berlin and gives this work a Latin title. The picture shows a dove with a green branch in its beak stand ing on a Chinese porcelain vase. The vase comes from a past advanced civilisation. In biblical mythology, the dove
is a witness to the Flood. With the olive branch, it promised Noah and the animals on his ark new life after this great catastrophe, which threatened the existence of many. There is a new beginning. We also sense it, because the shadow cast by the almost humble olive branch is mag nificent. A wonderful, magnificent bouquet of flowers awaits us.

Only superficially would one assume a love of detail in Günay Shamsi’s paintings. For in fact her love of the representa tional and the realistic – we could speak of „philorealism“ – is only a means to an end, for it is also a contradictory and almost surrealistic picture. The surrealist shadow cast does not escape the viewer. So we can speak of „Philo surrealism“ in Günay Shamsi’s painting. The contradiction in Günay Shamsi’s art is perhaps most appropriately verbalised by this neologism.

Dr. phil. Michael F. Feldkamp

Historian and political advisor to the German Bundestag on cultural matters, Berlin