Those I Leave Behind

Linden Wood
58 x 52 x 22 cm
2023

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A human figure with its back turned to us, head gently turned to look over its shoulder; it freezes that single instant caught between leaving and looking back. The work is made of two opposing layers: below, a dark mass charred by fire, symbolising the storm-filled past left behind; above, smooth, fragile, pale-toned linden. The softness of the linden lends the face its sorrow and hesitation, making its expression as light as a single breath. As the body steps toward the future, it is the story of how the gaze catches on that past — unseen behind us, yet forever calling us back.

The Sky

Beech Wood
115 x 40 x 20 cm
2026

When I saw the Artemis of Ephesus in the museum, I stood before her and looked at her for a long time. I was there, facing her confident presence and gaze. The gentle smile on her face made me feel she understood me. It was from that confident gaze that this work was born. She seemed to ask me to carry the story on by looking toward the sky, and this piece emerged. Variations of this posture exist in many cultures.
I feel it is an inheritance from the Anatolian Artemis…
Untroubled, serene, and free of worldly concern. As if to say, ‘The sky is our only boundary. The sky is yours; the sky belongs to everyone’… In that moment, the sky within us opened before us. — Ayhan Tomak

Ayhan Tomak carved this figure from the confident stance he took in for a long time before the Artemis of Ephesus in the museum. The arms are open to either side, the face turned to the sky. The figure neither summons anything nor bids anyone farewell; it stands untroubled, serene, and free of worldly concern. A heritage from the ancient Artemis of Anatolia — thousands of years ago, someone on these very lands looked up at the sky with the same confidence. Here the sky is not a boundary. It is an open expanse no one can possess and everyone shares: the sky is yours; the sky belongs to everyone. It speaks silently, too, with the Artemis mirror that closes the exhibition — one carries the goddess’s stance, the other her gaze. Between the two lies that serene sky within us.

September – Love / wood

Mulberry
46 x 30 x 19 cm
2026

“As nature prepares for its winter rest in autumn, the leaves detach from the branches and fall to the earth, where they begin their transformation and purification.
To return to the place from which they came, they become part of nature’s awakening in spring.
As nature awakens once again, the leaf begins its journey back.
Carried upward with the water through the trunk, it becomes nourishment and a source of life for the very tree from which it once fell.
This cycle between life and death may be called the rhythm of nature,
or its way of sharing;
it is also to love, and to be loved… “
— Ayhan Tomak

The palm-sized wooden sibling of the monumental Corten steel work in the plaza. The philosophy the artist builds around nature’s awakening and the leaf’s journey through the trunk with the rising water finds new expression here in the warmth of mulberry wood. By leaving the stone base at the bottom entirely raw, the hand-shaped leaf form confronts nature in its unrefined state; it reveals that breaking away is not an ending but a transformation that becomes part of nature’s rhythm of sharing.

If I Didn’t Burn “You & Me”

Alder Wood
36 x 23 x 23 cm
2023

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A single human head is split in two, straight down the middle, by a line as sharp as a blade. One half is jet-black with the ashes of fire, charred and full of cracks; the other is the smooth, untouched warmth of alder. By placing “you” and “I” not face to face but intertwined within a single body, Tomak whispers that true peace begins the moment we stop imagining the other as separate from ourselves.

The Tree of Life

Beech Wood
127 x 103 x 35 cm
2025

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A form in which roots and branches open with the same eagerness, moving to the same circular rhythm. Above, the branches unfurl like a crown; below, the roots reach toward the base with equal urgency. In the artist’s own words, this work blends traces of Anatolian mythology and the Hellenistic period through his own interpretation, and in the warm grain of the beech it tells, in a single breath, of the perfect balance between taking and giving, between being nourished and growing. Entering into a quiet kinship with the Tree of Peace in the plaza, it salutes the life to which peace gives breath.

Balance

Mazel Wood
175 x 90 x 21 cm
2016

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Here wood leaves behind its familiar hardness and resistance entirely, draping instead like a soft cloth suspended from an iron rod. Through this form, Ayhan Tomak gives physical expression to nature’s ancient rhythm and the delicate balance it sustains. Measuring only 21 centimetres in thickness, this thuja slab resembles the fine line of life itself: a space of existence where one may fall at any moment yet remain standing with equal possibility. Held only by its edge, carrying that quiet tension, the form becomes a silent expression of our most human moments — when we struggle to stay upright yet never quite break away and fall.

Selvi Boylum

Beech and Olive Wood
64 x 33 x 13.5 cm
2026

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The straight-lined, stable structure of the beech and the twisted, asymmetrical, restless nature of the olive meet in this sculpture with a vertical elegance. The monumental, slender silhouette its name evokes — “selvi boylum,” one as tall and graceful as a cypress — is carried by the upward flow of the wood’s own fibres. Drawing on the contrast of two different materials, the artist gives form to the naivety, the flexibility, and the quiet rooting strength — resisting the wind — that lie behind the human’s upright, proud reach toward the sky.

Happy Ending

Beech Wood
190 x 45 x 45 cm
2022

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One trunk charred to a deep black, the other in beech’s own pale tone, begin at the base, twisting upward together until they become a single knot at the very top. The artist has neither concealed nor polished the charred surface blackened by fire. Here the “happy ending” does not lie in remaining unscarred; on the contrary, it is the recognition that the burnt half, too, is the essential part that completes the whole and carries the other. Reaching the summit is possible only when both halves stay faithful to their shared movement.

September – Love / Monumental Sculpture

Corten Metal
320 x 200 x 60 cm
2025

In autumn, leaves fall from their branches,
and in spring, they begin their journey back.
Once they touch the soil, a new cycle begins—
of transformation, of renewal,
a return toward where they came from.
They become nourishment, a source of life,
for the very tree they once left.
This rhythm between life and death
can be called the rhythm of nature—
or sharing, or loving, or being loved…
LOVE

– Ayhan Tomak

This cycle of transformation, expressed in the artist’s own words, comes to life in the material itself. Corten steel, by its very nature, forms its own protective layer as it weathers, gaining strength through the very process of erosion. Standing in the open air of Urla, beneath rain and sun, this three-metre leaf will slowly develop its patina and change colour over time, physically living out the very process of “purification, transformation, and becoming nourishment for the place from which it fell” that the artist describes.