1.The works for this exhibition are the continuation of the works at the “…etcetera” exhibition I held last year. Forming a whole, truly, all my works have been the components, of this whole, such as the concepts of violence, power and alienation on which I have pondered and done extensive researches since the first day that the art became a significant part of my life; however, the last two exhibitions were held after a stage that I had focused on thinking about the phenomenon of migration.
To be aware of the common attitude being desensitized to the plight of the people who had been forced to migrate leaving their beloved home, as we kept encountering in our daily lives, destined me to think hard and work on this matter. I pondered on what the exile created in the individual materially and morally, the significance of how a person could be driven away from her/his own self, of how a person could be forced to submit being terrorized, of how a person could be forced to feel alienated and of how a person could be assimilated into another power. Being torn asunder from where you feel you belong, being torn apart from your roots and eventually belonging to nowhere and always missing home… Seeing all these has lead me to think again hard on the violence which has been sneaking around and is not being noticed easily any more as it has been much interiorized… I sympathized with the desperate feelings of the people who had not yet been able to sever their links with their pasts, on the contrary, who had mythicized their pasts with the significance they assigned to them. As they move towards the unknown future, having already gone through the trauma of being moved, by force, from where they had been living, these people whose minds were always busy with their lost country they had left behind and perhaps they were to define their existence via their lost country and what they were going to lose would be more than they had already lost… The people who fearfully cowered pretending to be adapted to their new land, or who rioted, actually, could riot… The people who created an absurd image, an eclectic view as they kept trying to retain their own culture and conventions on the new land they had newly arrived…The people who became targets of sarcastic, bizarre or, at best, pitying looks; or the people who sadly watching their genuine ‘colours’ dissolving in the new culture… The people who were in limbo on the land they had migrated…
In my works, I found out the darkness which had been created by the lost human beings, and the wrath of the nature in which the human beings kept trying to destroy. I realized that the conscious ‘one’ should show the great courage and determination to ask the question, “what can I do?” to oppose the ruthless destruction of the nature as well as every kind of violence, and to be able to take the responsibility of searching for the solutions to make the world habitable again, shortly, to be able to confront their dark sides overcoming their fear to be able to regain their human values.
My previous works were the ones which I attempted to move on struggling against my inner temples, gods, fears, worries and wishes, and the ones which I brought from the darkness that I tried to find out behind the brightness of the light.
As my concentration deepened during this process, I noticed that the images, dwelt in the abyssal depths of the unconscious, ascended to the conscious and maintained a theme I could call as the compromise of the conscious and the unconscious.
2. My technique and the materials I use reveal themselves pertaining to my thoughts when I start to work -- my hands, presumably, seem to know what materials they should reach.
I like working usually with the texture. The texture provides depth into the works, it helps me to catch the feeling of the three dimensions. I work on the surface layer by layer, I remove or add, as needed, and I finish the work. Thus, I consider I have caught up with the past, the present and the future. When the canvasses are not satisfactory, I tend to work on the three- dimensional works. In this exhibition, there are the newspapers I consider as the materials which form the memory of the humanity and which I always use enjoyably; besides, I use close- textured canvasses which I have developed with the materials such as sand, plaster, bitumen etc; and an installation, which, I call ‘the exhausted one’, has already travelled with me to several exhibitions-- but kept somewhat ‘metamorphosing’, and which I have used linen, plaster and styrofoam, and which, again, has been created by my special technique.
3. It is not possible for me to know what kind of impressions will my works make on the spectators, I can only talk about the effects which they will have, I hope, beyond merely looking at them. When I arrange my exhibitions, I usually dream about managing to motivate the spectator to make an inner journey.