In her new solo exhibition Alliance at D Contemporary, Secil Erel explores emotional and spatial dualities of migration, memory, and transformation through meditative abstraction
In the heart of London, Turkish-British artist Secil Erel is set to unveil Alliance, a solo exhibition that navigates the subtle terrain between internal transformation and spatial duality.
Running on June 3-14, 2025, in London's Mayfair at D Contemporary Gallery and coinciding with London Gallery Weekend, the exhibition presents a new body of work created exclusively for this occasion.
Erel, long based in London and maintaining a second studio in Istanbul, paints from a place of layered consciousness – her work a bridge between geographic, cultural, and emotional coordinates.
If Istanbul remains her heart, London has become her mind. "Alliance" is a response to the resonance between these polarities, an aesthetic dialogue between the rooted and the reimagined, between memory and momentum.
In the early chapters of her practice, Erel leaned into geometry, exploring unitary forms as metaphors for existence – mapping space, time, and memory with precision and restraint.
"Over time, and through the life-altering shift of relocating from Türkiye to the UK, her work began to internalize. Forms dissolved, atmospheres emerged," she told Anadolu.
Her canvas became less about depiction and more about invocation. Alliance draws from this dual evolution—analytical yet intuitive, minimal yet emotionally expansive.
The exhibition moves across two distinct sections of the gallery. The first pulses with modular structures, where subtle shifts suggest infinity through repetition.
In the second, individual units dissolve into wholeness, allowing the works themselves to embody the idea of alliance—as both metaphor and method.
“The world, the universe, is a singular system,” says Erel. “We each design our own spaces, build our own boundaries—but survival, creativity, growth—they all depend on the alliances we form, with one another and with ourselves.”
Breath, both as a physical act and philosophical symbol, emerges as a foundation in this new phase of her practice.
Following years of conscious living shaped by meditation and physical discipline, Erel credits neuroscientist Dr Joe Dispenza as a key influence.
His ethos, change begins in the mind, resonates deeply throughout her new work, where color, texture, and layered abstraction become meditative acts, portals toward the possible.
The artist's previous exhibition, State of Being, set the stage. Alliance is its evolution – a crystallized moment of rebirth, shaped by discipline but led by surrender.
Each piece carries within it what she describes as “fictional coincidences” – a concept that balances gratitude with dynamic will, and peace with inner fire.
These works do not just invite contemplation; they awaken the viewer's own imagination, encouraging emotional reflection and personal narrative.
The opening of the exhibition will be held on June 6, inviting guests into Erel's world of layered abstraction at D Contemporary in the heart of Mayfair.
