Halil Akdeniz | Selected Bio Texts
Personal Notes By The Artist Concerning His Work - Note-II
The production of a work of art is much like the production of ideas, and in fact art today is seen as a form of thinking. Processes in the emergence of thought, such as abstraction, comparison, the formation of concepts, judgement, decision-making and the drawing of conclusions, are found, in a different and more complex guise, in the creation of an art work. It is only through such processes that certain psychological factors can be brought into conciousness that the outer world can be reflected in the mind, and that these events can be recreated in line, paint or similar materials.
My current period is centered on Anatolian Civilizations, and uses materials (in the larger sense) from varying regions of the peninsula and various historical cultures. The work is guided by a concept employing written signs and symbols from ancient Greek and Hittite civilizations, as found in different parts of Anatolia today. The written signs of past cultures, their symbols and other materials are reevaluated on a different plane of consciousness to undergo change in time, setting and function; so that they end by being new entities in terms of idea and visual impact. Although to begin with these signs and symbols had meanings clearly related to their original sources, the whole that emerged from their coming together on the artistic plane is quite complex and refractory to interpretation. These new entities are the result of a series of intuitional and ideational processes. These cultural materials, taken from different periods of history, are used in conjunction with such modern-day images as surveyor’s rods, range-poles and metallic triangles. These are artistic solutions reached in the course of a career, reflections of my personal choices and sensibility, entities I have gleaned from the multifarious details of various cultures.
Ankara, 1993
The production of a work of art is much like the production of ideas, and in fact art today is seen as a form of thinking. Processes in the emergence of thought, such as abstraction, comparison, the formation of concepts, judgement, decision-making and the drawing of conclusions, are found, in a different and more complex guise, in the creation of an art work. It is only through such processes that certain psychological factors can be brought into conciousness that the outer world can be reflected in the mind, and that these events can be recreated in line, paint or similar materials.
My current period is centered on Anatolian Civilizations, and uses materials (in the larger sense) from varying regions of the peninsula and various historical cultures. The work is guided by a concept employing written signs and symbols from ancient Greek and Hittite civilizations, as found in different parts of Anatolia today. The written signs of past cultures, their symbols and other materials are reevaluated on a different plane of consciousness to undergo change in time, setting and function; so that they end by being new entities in terms of idea and visual impact. Although to begin with these signs and symbols had meanings clearly related to their original sources, the whole that emerged from their coming together on the artistic plane is quite complex and refractory to interpretation. These new entities are the result of a series of intuitional and ideational processes. These cultural materials, taken from different periods of history, are used in conjunction with such modern-day images as surveyor’s rods, range-poles and metallic triangles. These are artistic solutions reached in the course of a career, reflections of my personal choices and sensibility, entities I have gleaned from the multifarious details of various cultures.
Ankara, 1993