MEHMET SALİH KANBER - MSK
The artist of engineered perception.
Following a quietly transformative experience, he turned to art and started working at the intersection of engineering, time, and material behavior. He creates engineered artworks that render overlooked beauty perceptible. Extending beyond traditional exhibition spaces, his practice enters urban environments, prompting unexpected pauses and renewed ways of seeing.
WHY HE CREATES - ARTIST STATEMENT
Having contributed, through engineering, to the construction of a hyper-accelerated and rational world, he seeks through his art to reclaim the slowness it has taken from us. His practice is driven by a persistent and unresolved main question:
THE CONTRADICTION
He sustains both engineering and artistic practice without surrendering either. Engineering accelerates time through efficiency, while art resists through slowness and attention. The unresolved tension between forward momentum and deliberate pause becomes the ground from which his practice emerges.
THE COMPLETION
Completion arises through integration, not resolution. Engineering provides structure and complexity; art assigns direction and meaning. Technical remnants transform into artistic material, producing hybrid works where precision and intuition mutually complete one another.
ARTWORKS
His works are often quiet constructions of perception, occasionally resonating with force, some addressing forms of beauty that fade with time or disappear through neglect, while others are conceived for long-term endurance and preservation. Each work exists as part of a growing system rather than as an isolated object. Its meaning emerges not from rarity alone, but from its position within an expanding body of work.
Stone Portraits | Translating Micro Beauty into Macro Scale (2025-)
Mediterranean sea stones, macro-photographed by MSK using self-developed techniques, reveal unseen details. The collector’s choice defines the work’s final presence through museum-grade archival printing. Each piece includes the original epoxy-protected stone with its story and signature, unique, irreversible, and shaped by time and choice.
MSK Stones | Belong to those who find them (2025-)
Placed within urban and everyday spaces, the stones, produced with the inclusion of filaments recycled from 3D printing waste, create quiet encounters where overlooked beauty emerges. Some contain NFC tags linking to a video, extending the experience beyond the object. Once found, the stones belong to their finders, who are invited to share the moment, allowing beauty and time to briefly surface and circulate. Location clues for the stones are documented on Instagram: @mehmetsalihkanber as an extension of the work.
Artwork on Stone Canvases | Re-Materializing a Lost Sea Stone by Recycling (2025)
Stone Canvases emerge from loss and transformation. MSK re-materializes a lost sea stone by recycling 3D-printing waste into filament, turning absence into form. Painted and framed as integral works, these stone canvases transform engineering waste into art, allowing the lost stone to persist through material translation.
Non-Hypsometric Stones | Colored not by Elevation but Imagination (2025-)
These works emerge from Stone Canvases through the deliberate disruption of elevation-based coloration prior to production. Each work is produced through an irreversible color process and epoxy-coated by MSK to achieve its final luminous finish. Every Non-Hypsometric Stone is unique and unrepeatable by design.
Stonalyzer V1 | Perceiving the Memory of Stones (2026-)
If a device could read a stone’s memory, what would it reveal, only violence and destruction, or also fragile moments of beauty? This work poses the question through a speculative apparatus, where images emerge without hierarchy.
Inscriptional Bodies | What Lives Within (2026-)
The human figure becomes a surface for inscription, where inner thoughts are written into presence. Language turns the body into a map of emotion, revealing that what we carry inside holds its own quiet beauty. By inviting the viewer to read this interior landscape, the work encourages a recognition of the beauty within, not only in the figure, but within themselves.
Within (2026-)
Within invites the viewer to notice a small beauty hidden in a corner, emerging from repetition. The similarly colored stones suggest visual noise and familiarity, while a single distinct stone quietly interrupts the field. In this moment of contrast, beauty appears not as a fixed property, but as something revealed through attention.
The work poses a simple question: can we still recognize what is beautiful amid what feels ordinary or rough? Here, beauty exists within, whether it is seen or not, it remains there.
EXHIBITION FORMATS
His works are encountered across multiple contexts rather than confined to a single exhibition format.
They operate within gallery spaces, public and urban environments, and digitally extended platforms, adapting to each setting while preserving their conceptual integrity. By moving between controlled exhibition spaces and everyday urban landscapes, the works create situations of unexpected attention. Physical encounters are often extended through digital layers, allowing the practice to exist simultaneously in specific locations and beyond them, independent of time and place.
Solo Exhibitions:
The First One — MSK Art Space, Antalya, Türkiye (January 2026)
RESUME
The artist holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU) and a Master’s degree from Akdeniz University. With a professional background spanning energy systems, automation, robotics, and control engineering, his work is grounded in a deep understanding of technical structure, systems thinking, and functional design.
Alongside his artistic practice, he founded a company focused on developing functional products that can be manufactured through 3D printing. This intersection of engineering precision and creative experimentation informs a multidisciplinary approach, where material, process, and perception are explored as interconnected systems.
CONNECT
For curatorial inquiries, collaborations, or meaningful conversations.
Email: connect@mehmetsalihkanber.com
Workshop: Kırcami mah. avni tolunay cad. uysal evler alkış sit. 115/C Muratpaşa / Antalya / TURKIYE
COPYRIGHT & RIGHTS
All works, images, texts, and content presented on this website are the intellectual property of Mehmet Salih Kanber and are protected by applicable laws. Unauthorized use in any form is strictly prohibited.
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