Semih Zeki | Selected Bio Texts
2019 - 2018 - 2017 - 2016 - 2015
2014 - 2013 - 2012 - 2011 - 2010
EN ESSAY ON MY ART
Today we are confronted by a conflict of representation and counter-representation. There is a freedom created by modernity while at the same time an inanity that is increasing with uncertainty. On the other hand, there is an argument from all this uncertainty and inanity, that of being a fictional reality. Nothing is static anymore. Versatility is the most important fact of our lives and all the values of our lives are increasing by adding one onto another and continuing to copy itself. The process of segmentation becomes endless by the new recreating itself permanently. The concept of value is being realised from time to time. However, this concept will soon disappear due to a growing awareness; it is the same in art.
An individual characterized by herd behaviour does not have an answer for the ones who intervene in their lives or fill their environment with inane forms or break their relationship with nature. Since individuals have lost their ability to be an individual, they have become more like genetically modified organisms in social life. If we discuss this from my perspective on art, at the first sight we may say that deconstruction seems like a perpetual repetition. Nevertheless, one can argue that I am making a criticism of the construction and nonrecurring, fast, variant and renovated system.
The result of each layer blanketing over the previous one, ultimately changing it or reducing its effect by covering it, is similar to the images we see in our daily lives through mass media. The paintings diverge from the point of origin with every colour, image, or line that is added to the surface with the final outcome taking a completely different form. This situation, that I created deliberately, is an obvious proof of the change in human nature that is evolving every day due to the effects of thousands of images being poured through our media outlets. In thus, the deprivation of identity is being questioned.
By examining my production process one can understand, especially from my fictions of metamorphosis of constructions, I tend to relate with what is contemporary instead of what is historical. Architectural structures, which I mess with and modify by bringing them side by side, is a current condition confronted in everyday life. Transience is being put forward within the idea of permanence. The transition of the structure of urban fabric put together with high technology has become shorter. Variability, transience, and chaos become part of our lives as a result. The increase of these indications are unconsciously drawing people into a vortex.
Distorted relationship between today’s human and nature is being questioned in my art. The focus is on the human but does not point them out. One of the vilest circumstances that humans face today is the mass construction of contemporary buildings taking over the natural environment. Every day another concrete column is built over a green area and the natural sunlight is surrounded by shadows. I want to put an emphasis on my paintings giving a feeling of pentür infrastructure that is being contained through experimental features. By doing this every painting is affirmed through its own journey. Generally buildings of concrete blocks (gross masses) are important since they are fictionalised differently and their perpetual changing structure keeps the nature in the background, showing how we evolve in time and what we come across in our everyday lives. My later work is mostly traces of semantics. The systematic aesthetics created by repeatedly dividing the construction varies from one painting to another and is seen in the dynamics of the masses, the transparent forms, and the lines that intervene with the forms. It is hard to be lost or erased.
It is interesting that at the construction phase, gross mass on the ground dissepeares from time to time and ultimately shows the strength of nature and how the eclectic can be demolished by nature. Although nature is sometimes both used as a direct subject or null subject, in my art there is always nature. It is important that these structures show how time is shaped by isolation from chaos, silence, and open space, while at the same time the successive layers makes us examine this course of chaos. The underlying reason I desire to present the forms I create as an imaginary situation is to show how persuasive paintings can be in presenting life as an illusion.
My later work has an emphasis on new constructions. The main reason is to feel the soul of the construction and the fear of showing it differently from its apparent look. For instance, The Dome of Cologne, which you will see in a few of my paintings, is the first of this series. In my opinion, the function of art is not just to act as a catalyst for criticism and discussion, or to show representations of what is beautiful or unique but also to create awareness. In the paintings of the A.V.M series I tried to criticize and make technical, systematic references to the chaos in shopping malls and its illusion while showing its aesthetic constructional anatomy.
To explain the exhibition with the main feature of my work, we can say that the exhibition is construction focused. Examining the construction as both semantic and technical with a constant variability by making reference to reproduction and world of copy through the concept of time. The real reason for the usage of constructional anatomy in my art is like opening a cadaver, observing human anatomy by a way of breaking the construction every time and generating a language that is produced constantly. This language is one of the corner stones of my art.
21st December, 2014
Today we are confronted by a conflict of representation and counter-representation. There is a freedom created by modernity while at the same time an inanity that is increasing with uncertainty. On the other hand, there is an argument from all this uncertainty and inanity, that of being a fictional reality. Nothing is static anymore. Versatility is the most important fact of our lives and all the values of our lives are increasing by adding one onto another and continuing to copy itself. The process of segmentation becomes endless by the new recreating itself permanently. The concept of value is being realised from time to time. However, this concept will soon disappear due to a growing awareness; it is the same in art.
An individual characterized by herd behaviour does not have an answer for the ones who intervene in their lives or fill their environment with inane forms or break their relationship with nature. Since individuals have lost their ability to be an individual, they have become more like genetically modified organisms in social life. If we discuss this from my perspective on art, at the first sight we may say that deconstruction seems like a perpetual repetition. Nevertheless, one can argue that I am making a criticism of the construction and nonrecurring, fast, variant and renovated system.
The result of each layer blanketing over the previous one, ultimately changing it or reducing its effect by covering it, is similar to the images we see in our daily lives through mass media. The paintings diverge from the point of origin with every colour, image, or line that is added to the surface with the final outcome taking a completely different form. This situation, that I created deliberately, is an obvious proof of the change in human nature that is evolving every day due to the effects of thousands of images being poured through our media outlets. In thus, the deprivation of identity is being questioned.
By examining my production process one can understand, especially from my fictions of metamorphosis of constructions, I tend to relate with what is contemporary instead of what is historical. Architectural structures, which I mess with and modify by bringing them side by side, is a current condition confronted in everyday life. Transience is being put forward within the idea of permanence. The transition of the structure of urban fabric put together with high technology has become shorter. Variability, transience, and chaos become part of our lives as a result. The increase of these indications are unconsciously drawing people into a vortex.
Distorted relationship between today’s human and nature is being questioned in my art. The focus is on the human but does not point them out. One of the vilest circumstances that humans face today is the mass construction of contemporary buildings taking over the natural environment. Every day another concrete column is built over a green area and the natural sunlight is surrounded by shadows. I want to put an emphasis on my paintings giving a feeling of pentür infrastructure that is being contained through experimental features. By doing this every painting is affirmed through its own journey. Generally buildings of concrete blocks (gross masses) are important since they are fictionalised differently and their perpetual changing structure keeps the nature in the background, showing how we evolve in time and what we come across in our everyday lives. My later work is mostly traces of semantics. The systematic aesthetics created by repeatedly dividing the construction varies from one painting to another and is seen in the dynamics of the masses, the transparent forms, and the lines that intervene with the forms. It is hard to be lost or erased.
It is interesting that at the construction phase, gross mass on the ground dissepeares from time to time and ultimately shows the strength of nature and how the eclectic can be demolished by nature. Although nature is sometimes both used as a direct subject or null subject, in my art there is always nature. It is important that these structures show how time is shaped by isolation from chaos, silence, and open space, while at the same time the successive layers makes us examine this course of chaos. The underlying reason I desire to present the forms I create as an imaginary situation is to show how persuasive paintings can be in presenting life as an illusion.
My later work has an emphasis on new constructions. The main reason is to feel the soul of the construction and the fear of showing it differently from its apparent look. For instance, The Dome of Cologne, which you will see in a few of my paintings, is the first of this series. In my opinion, the function of art is not just to act as a catalyst for criticism and discussion, or to show representations of what is beautiful or unique but also to create awareness. In the paintings of the A.V.M series I tried to criticize and make technical, systematic references to the chaos in shopping malls and its illusion while showing its aesthetic constructional anatomy.
To explain the exhibition with the main feature of my work, we can say that the exhibition is construction focused. Examining the construction as both semantic and technical with a constant variability by making reference to reproduction and world of copy through the concept of time. The real reason for the usage of constructional anatomy in my art is like opening a cadaver, observing human anatomy by a way of breaking the construction every time and generating a language that is produced constantly. This language is one of the corner stones of my art.
21st December, 2014