About the Gallery
Galeri MCRD is a contemporary art gallery featuring artworks celebrating imagination. The gallery closed its Istanbul Tophane location in May 2015 due to the owners' moving to New York city following their son studying at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. The gallery resumed its operation in 2019 at its Istanbul Acarkent location.
The interior of the gallery in Acarkent
Galeri MCRD has been first opened in Tophane, Beyoğlu at İstanbul's cultural center in an old building adjacent to the Italian Consulate in 2013 as Galeri Mücerred, meaning 'abstract, pure'. In 2014, the gallery changed its name to Galeri MCRD focusing on digital arts and new media exhibiting international artists. Its scope comprised digital painting, photography, video, animation, kinetic art, sound art, interactive and web art. In the following years its scope shifted to painting and sculpture. The first exhibition under Galeri MCRD name took place in 2014.
The interior of the gallery in Tophane, photo courtesy Emre Ogan
The gallery ethos is to promote innovative artists celebrating imagination.
The gallery founders are a husband-wife team who have both worked as finance executive in large multinational companies. Ogeday Cagatay then worked as consultant for private equity companies before founding the gallery in 2013.Yasemin Cengiz Cagatay learned art history and how to paint as a child from her artist mother, and after a decade in corporate management, started to indulge in her passion for art to become a self-taught artist and a Sotheby's Institute of Art educated gallerist.