Sibel Kocabasi is a Turkish - American painter and multi media artist, whose training in traditional Turkish arts allows her to employ a highly refined sense of pattern. Her work uses decorative pattern and social content to achieve a balance of two contrasting elements, emphasizing the beauty and misfortune of humanity's impact on nature in a single statement. Now using photography as well as oils, she states:
“The internet, digital technology and digital media have become a vast playing field in terms of areas for artists to explore. As an artist I have an interest in these developments but I have my reservations. There is an issue concerning how one might collect and archive digital art. I have created my own strategies in order to deal with new media works. I am using found photography and found objects for my own mixed media with a very simple camera as recording device. This is not an attempt to define new artistic medium only to explore new avenues for me as an artist. This approach, which is new to me, allows directness, with relatively short time from concept to a viewable image, in contrast with my oil paintings. The subject matter are the recurring themes that interest or trouble me in my daily life: human impact on the environment including wild animals; patriotism; nationalism; war; women issues; contemporary farming methods and more.”
Kocabasi has organized and curated several group exhibitions both domestically and abroad. In 2007 she conceived and curated Undertow, featuring the work of 29 artists from Miami and Palm Beach County at Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul, Turkey. This exhibition celebrated the contemporary artwork of south Florida in the dramatic and contrasting surroundings of the oldest fine arts university in Turkey. In May 2009 Kocabasi curated Open Air, a one night outdoor exhibition of contemporary, cutting edge installations by 22 artists in Lake Worth, Palm Beach County. This was followed in the summer of 2011 by Mid Summer Pop Up, which transformed empty retail space into a week-long "pop up" gallery showcasing the work of emerging artists in Palm Beach Gardens, FL. In March, 2012, she curated Outside the Box , a two night outdoor exhibition of contemporary, cutting edge installations by 22 artists at Whitespace Mordes Collection in West Palm Beach.
