CIRCLING LEV: The Art and Life of K. Levni Sinanoğlu
through the lens of friends, colleagues, students, mentors and collectors

Circling Lev presents work that spans time from K. Lev Sinanoğlu’s days as a student at Hampshire and Yale, up until 2016, the year Sinanoğlu passed away. Throughout his career, Sinanoğlu made paintings that offer a distinctive and visionary space. Both of the physical world and a spiritual realm, Sinanoğlu’s paintings conjure a timeless place for thought, meditation and imagination.

The exhibition highlights Sinanoğlu’s approach to art making as that of a spiritual traveler, and explores important themes that reoccurred in his work throughout his life. These include his use of imagery such as ancient temples and symbols, inspired by his travels through the Middle East; artistic influences including Philip Guston, Paul Klee, Metaphysical painting and Persian miniatures; and painting as a thought practice, manifest in Sinanoglu’s “thinking table,” a table of objects, akin to a rock garden, that Sinanoğlu would continually curate and keep in his studio for inspiration. These symbolic relics will be on view re-contextualized as studio space within the exhibition.