Image: Cevdet Erek, Americas, 2026, layout sketch. Colored pencil on paper. Courtesy the artist
SculptureCenter will present ‘Cevdet Erek: Americas’ from September 19 through December 28, 2026, the Istanbul-based artist and musician’s first solo exhibition in New York. It is one of three new solo presentations opening at the Long Island City institution on the same day, and is curated by Jovanna Venegas, Curator.
The exhibition brings together five site-specific sonic works Erek developed over the past decade for Mexico City, Chicago, San Francisco, São Paulo and the former US embassy in The Hague, alongside a new commission for SculptureCenter. SculptureCenter describes the result as a distributed system of sound, rhythm and architecture, with the rhythmic structure tuned to the textures of the building’s labyrinthine lower level.
The new commission draws on two histories rooted in New York City: the emergence of heavy underground music in the 1980s, and ‘Sound/Art’, a 1984 exhibition at SculptureCenter curated by composer and sculptor William Hellermann that contributed to the definition of sound art as a genre. Erek, who grew up in Istanbul, encountered US popular culture through tapes, album covers and imagery associated with heavy music, particularly thrash metal — an influence on his experimental band Nekropsi and on the themes of warfare, environmental destruction, political manipulation and alienation his work engages.
Among the works reprised is ‘Thrash softly from afar’ (2019), composed of five directional loudspeakers and originally commissioned for ‘Soft Power’ at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. For ‘Americas’ it is set in dialogue with Erek’s new research into the parallel histories of sound art and thrash music.
An opening reception will take place on Saturday, September 19, from 2 to 4pm at SculptureCenter, 44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City, NY 11101. The reception also celebrates ‘Aziz Hazara: Coming Home’ and ‘Yining Fei: Feral Sediment’, both likewise on view through December 28.
Erek will lead ‘Cevdet Erek: Sounds, Artworks, Words’ at SculptureCenter on Tuesday, September 22, from 6:30 to 7:30pm. The program is described as part artist talk and part live mix, with Erek presenting music samples, images and research fragments in dialogue with the works on view. Space is limited and an RSVP is required.
Born in Istanbul in 1974, Erek studied architecture at Mimar Sinan University for Fine Arts and sound engineering and design at Istanbul Technical University’s MIAM, and was a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 2005–06. He showed at dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012, represented Türkiye at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, and took part in the Liverpool and São Paulo biennials in 2025. Support for the exhibition comes from SAHA, from Bilge Ogut-Cumbusyan and Haro Cumbusyan, and from the SAHA x TPF Art Circle.
SculptureCenter is closed for installation until September 19, when it resumes regular hours of Thursday through Monday, noon to 6pm. ‘Americas’ remains on view through December 28, 2026.
