Mehmet Talha Gürel

Biography

Talha Gürel is an Istanbul-based artist and filmmaker. His practice is situated between sculpture, film, and experimental visual narratives. He is particularly known for his silicone sculptures, figurative abstractions, and unsettling aesthetic language. His work focuses on the human body, everyday situations, and individual perception as its core concerns. In his filmmaking, he prioritizes atmosphere, temporality, and sensory rhythm over conventional narrative, working within the porous boundaries between documentary and fiction. He is influenced by artists such as Jan Švankmajer, Karel Zeman, and Nick Hilligoss, and his cinematic language is shaped by surrealism, the transformation of objects and the body, and the deliberate blurring of the line between reality and imagination. Gürel approaches cinema as a moving extension of sculptural thinking, constructing images as intuitive and physical experiences rather than narrative-driven forms.