Fabricated Love
Enari Gallery, Amsterdam
2024
Bir Tatlı Huzur / Bebek Sahil
Springboard Art Fair, Werkspoorkathedraal, Utrecht
2023
On the 30th and the 31st of May in 2022, respectively,
there was a sighting of a couple having sex, and a man
lying down nude, enjoying a cigarette in a busy public
spot in Istanbul; the shore of Bebek-a historic neighbourhood on the Bosphorus which has been associated
with being a more tranquil, affluent and scenic area of
the city. These images went viral, circulating around various Turkish media platforms, and several similar incidents were being sighted across the country around the
same timeline. These incidents-for a lot of people had a
symbolic resonance of the sociopolitical and economic
situation of the country. People were increasingly frustrated with the immense economic and administrative
mismanagement that had been increasing in the last decade and markedly of the hostility of the ruling political
party towards anyone that didn’t fit in their conservative,
political-Islamist following. These images of these incidents had been inordinately circulating across social media and had begun to carry a meme-like quality. In this
painting series, these images are monumentalised and
slightly obscured to emphasise an uncanny quality that
they already have.
A mysterious light follows the surfaces of the virtual and tangible, the organic and inorganic. A panoptic gaze is implied; one is never lonely, yet always lonely. An obscure reality is portrayed, shrouded with paranoia and superfluous information. The character, trapped in this reality, burrows into a state of complete apathy, growingly disoriented by the hyper saturation of superfluous information and paranoid atmosphere. Blank space, blank eyes, blank name. The viewers are invited to disorient themselves in this obscure world.