AN-ARCHE
The path extending from the self to the universe is my own body, so much and so nothing.
According to the Ancient Greek poet Hesiodos, one of the creators of the mythological cosmogony and theogony, there is chaos at the origin of the creation of the earth. At the same time, and perhaps counter intuitively, chaos constitutes cosmic harmony itself. Following the train of this understanding, from Hermes to Orpheus, into a myth of creation and belief, we witness the transformation of nature into a mysterious world. In such a world though it is an outcome of the very nature of man that ritual and talisman have been of the essence in regard of spirituality. A human being is a part of and parcels of the notion of natura naturans, which gives meaning to what s/he experiences in the space of nature itself and his/her own subjectivity. Art, again perhaps counter-intuitively, is a natural form of activity, which makes this process of signification and sublimation of the meaning visible.
Remembering and the desire of being remembered is the outcome of a behavior, which requires humans to leave a trace. Starting from a line until it becomes a form imitating nature, the trace/mark, has always come into being as the manifestation of a sense of elevation; then come the sound, and the sound and the resonance. From the whistle of the wind to the music of symphonies, from a shaman’s invocation to religious hymns, the music that rises over the complicated emotions of worship, dedication and liberation... Like painting, music also centers round the mysterious relationship of man’s harmony with nature. According to the monotheistic creation myth “in the beginning was the Word; then, “Silence appeared,” says Jean Baudrillard in his book ‘‘Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?’’ This is a misconception on his part; because, in fact it is the word that caused the silence to deteriorate.
There was silence in the beginning and then the word appeared. ‘‘There is no longer anything to be called as the end.’’ the same philosopher goes on to add. However, both the beginning and the end are the accelerating generators of the same cycle and like a reflection in a mirror, they proliferate in each other. When man perceives the beginning and the end as a duality like birth and death, s/he begins to question what life means and to design the gods. This is the point at which we have to look for the beginning of art (art’s arche).
This arche – beginning and principle (arche has a double meaning in Greek) is what concerns me; the first untouched state of art; actually the state before art becomes art.
My location in time and space as an artist originates from a situation, which is neither the first nor the original but just – an-arche. Like Klee seeking for music in painting on a two dimensional surface adorned with abstract symbols, I too search for music and harmony. The ritualism in paintings and installations can be reconciled with orphic spirituality. My works are as old and “anachronistic” as the ancient quest for harmony with nature because I believe that thinking within the boundaries of the present creates a cognitive situation that is contradictory to art.
Orphism is a term, which used generally to describe the compositions of the cubic painting artists based on color harmony. I believe the paintings that I produce completely correspond with orphic art; in both senses of the term. Stemming from Orphism the offshoot of Cubism, and Orphism stemming from Orpheus, son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope, he of the divine Music. We can metaphorically perceive the reflection of Hermetic and Orphic dualism in the ritual paintings, adorned with abstract symbols that are inspired from nature, constructed within motifs concern calligraphic system and musicality. My paintings (with either paints or objects) feature an esoteric fiction that cannot but evoke talisman and spell. You can see in my installations as well that I proceed on the same tendencies path and juxtapositions. Moreover, the pictures that I took comprise objects transformed into painting constructed with the same approach. In fact, it might be more accurate to talk about these pictures as ones that I ‘made/constructed’ rather than ‘took’. The objects and space in the pictures, which I handle with digital instruments, abandon their own reality and move into a metaphysical dimension while transformed into something else from what they were originally.
Unlike metropolitan intellectuals trapped into topicality, I aim to make art like a shaman who tries to return to and commune with the cosmic unity of the nature. Primitiveness and geometry, intuition and consciousness, subject and object, mystery and clarity, part and whole, suspicion and the absolute. Clashing with dualities and like a homo ludens (playing man) making, I part of the game, I am trying to prove that all this sublimation is nothing but a role taking game.
If every ritual is an escape from reality and a form of resistance against nothingness, art does not reveal a state of presence different from that. I think it is necessary to find a way of purifying ourselves from all the impacts of everyday life, which prevent us from asking “Is nothingness itself the only truth?” Even defining myself as an anarchist and an atheist falls short of that; On the other hand perhaps it is more than that. If my journey is towards “nothing” than, these definitions may also lose their own value.
Description forms/styles extending from shamanism to hermetic rituals of Egyptians, to the cosmogony in the Ancient Greek Mythology and cultural anthropology – that reached up until today on ethnography level are located in the cultural gene structure of my work. From an ancient ceramic to an icon, from a painting in a temple to the motifs on rugs, from a shaman's talismanic objects to the schematic pictures of an alchemist, from eternal stones to the manuscripts, from a Far eastern painting to miniature… Whatever there is that painting and writing perceives as a whole, exercises and preoccupies my mind. This inspiration and source of knowledge that renders artistic production dynamic is what keeps my mind alive. Always. Of course the psycho-dynamics of art, its social influence, its intellectual and spiritual oscillations, the ontological concerns and being virtuous are also important and indeed substantial for an artist; but what is more important is that an artist should not allow his/her own presence to be a tool for another mind’s sublimity try-outs.
Ideographical signs as –metalinguistic and paralinguistic codes– deliberately spread on the surface to give shape to the prosodic rhythm, which defines a poetical character of my “painting as writing”. The primitive tendencies as a ritual and instinctive relationship with the nature and the sense of geometrical perfection both introduced in a dualistic way, which represents the eclectic coherence of modern man. Writing is an intellectual and ontological presence, black is geometry of emptiness, and rigorous lines and hasty writing all are about the psychological contradictions that I use as a precondition of sub-conscience. An apocryphal experience of devotion in ancient writings has always been my inspiration. Pictograms instinctively designed as an invention of an incomprehensible and incompatible language are aiming to produce signs of intellectual independency.
I consider myself a topiary gardener who works with the perception. My gardens are utopian places where plants and organic beings that crowding them are being fed by a cosmic energy. A magic of cohesion that emanates incessantly. A chaotic order but that looks like an absolute geometry. Each painting is like a garden where cosmogony is being reflecting as like as the geometry of chaos; harmony of imperfection, a fertile antinomy, divergences that reconcile impossible coexistences.
The contradiction between a shamanic instinct and scientific logic is evident, but no mystical tendencies emphasized on purpose although it may so seem. All these signs –material or/and gestural– that appear as neutral morphemes with a trans-sensual spirituality, are there to contradict the idea that the pause in moments of intellectual desperation tends to escape into emptiness as an unconceivable momentum.
What is mystical or hermetic in my art is only a mimetic embodiment of archaic behavior of art. In a way, I attempt to divulge the paradox in artwork. An anthropological search, without questioning what is progress or regression, but simultaneously a kind of instrument for re-establishing an archaic past of the rituality in art. I am the primitive of the future… A modern Shaman. Chronically anachronistic!
