UnNude: The Architecture of the Body
A Photography Exhibition at Die Akt Galerie Berlin

The Body as Sculpture: Opening of the “UnNude” Exhibition

WHAT: UnNude: The Architecture of the Body – Photography Exhibition
WHEN: September 05–28, 2025
Friday- Saturday–Sunday, 3:00 PM–7:00 PM
WHERE: Die Akt Galerie, Krossener Str. 34, 10245 Berlin
Getting There: A ~15-min walk from S+U Warschauer Straße station and a short walk from U Samariterstraße (U5) station.
Die Akt Galerie Google MAP: maps.app.goo.gl/cX2Nru3Q
ADMISSION: Free
You are invited to the opening of “UnNude,” an exhibition reinterpreting the human form through sculptural abstraction by Berlin-based photographer Burak Bulut Yıldırım. On the opening night, meet the artist and experience the “breathing photographs” video installation.

burakbulut.org/unnude  /  instagram.com/burak.bulut.yildirim

From Opening Night (05.09.2025)

UnNude

UnNude renews how we look rather than simply showing the body. Spanning nineteen years, the series withdraws the face and softens markers of identity; skin becomes line, a fold becomes volume, and shadow becomes a hollow/void.

Working in black and white, with hard light and tight framing, the images deliberately unsettle scale: a back hollow reads like a valley; an elbow ridge like an architectural section. This loss of orientation turns the body into topography and invites a haptic gaze; grain, fine hairs and high/low-key contrasts bring the surface’s materiality forward (close to what Laura U. Marks calls “haptic visuality”).

Behind the abstraction is a modernist lineage: Rodin’s fragment, Barbara Hepworth’s void, Brancusi’s reduction; in photographic history Bill Brandt’s play with scale, Edward Weston’s dune–body affinities, Mapplethorpe’s sculptural light; at the experimental edge László Moholy-Nagy. Yet the work relies less on named influences than on photography’s own means: light’s power to cut, the frame’s power to disorient.

A single-channel video in the installation returns time to the stills: short takes filmed in the same light and pose for each photograph are shown slowed down, so the image’s “graphic breath” becomes visible. The print holds form; the moving image reveals life. The exhibition sets up a swing between sculpture and cinema, between space and time.

UnNude does not reject sensuality; it separates it from consumption and turns it into attentive looking. Viewers are invited to step away from portrait and identity and to read and measure the images—much as one would study a relief or a plan.

Limited Edition. Archival pigment prints are available in 5+1 editions. They can be acquired on platforms such as Artsper.com and SaatchiArt.com (search: Burak Bulut Yıldırım), or purchased directly via PayPal at 40% below the platform price during the exhibition. Info: contact@meryemaydin.co

This comprehensive presentation at Die Akt Galerie, Berlin is the first gallery-level showing of the 19-year project (5–28 September 2025).

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Burak Bulut Yıldırım is a Berlin-based fine-art photographer and Sony Europe Imaging Ambassador (2018–2025). His work has been exhibited across Europe.