Orhan Koçak defines the inner world as a representational space fed by libido-like energy, composed not only of conscious thoughts and fantasies, but also of negative, repressed, or erased unconscious content and mechanisms. It is therefore natural that even when depicting the objective world, we encounter phantasmatic interpretations that become strange and result in deformation due to their own inner reality. Consequently, the likelihood that fictions rooted in a conflicted inner world, fictions that are enigmatic by nature and inherently closed, will resonate with the viewer’s knowledge, expectations, and imagination remains perpetually open to debate. Mustafa Horasan, who transforms his dreams into paintings at an extreme point where fantasy defines the boundaries, finds himself in precisely this context: an unsettling experience whose outcomes remain ambiguous.

Above all, Horasan operates within an uncanny space animated by his intuitions and dream world, guided by a sensibility of personification, place-making, and storytelling that evokes supernatural phenomena. Within this visual space, established as a unity of language and action, the painting can remain as cold and repellent as possible. And yet, there exists here a privileged skill and a mode of formal construction that renders the imaginary being pursued utterly convincing. It must be noted that the fantastic elements foregrounded by their abnormal qualities, whether ugly, moon-faced, crippled, gender-ambiguous, animalistic, or dwarf-like, along with other figures and forms representing unreality, reinforce this stance considerably. Thus, we can readily say that a plane of immanence, seemingly an extension of schizophrenic fragmentation, shaped in broad strokes by matters relating to chaos, violence, and sexuality, creates its own autonomous grotesque space.

a visual process that finds its identity through the shock of mise-en-scène

In narratives of this kind, grounded in phantasmatic construction, it is well known that the dimensions of time and space cannot bear their true meanings under the yoke of the dreamlike mechanism. Likewise, it is evident that the distortion of characters through abnormalization does not permit observations pertaining to the present. In this regard, we can say that Horasan’s conception of space, addressing chaotic associations and often constructed in a manner disconnected from the figure, is structured within a contradictory wholeness. Ultimately, the figure in Horasan’s painting is subjected to a relationship unfolding on the foreground plane, either alone or alongside an accumulation of other figures and objects. Despite everything, it exemplifies a principled resolution within a depthless spatial approach and a figure-space disjunction. Moreover, it becomes apparent that the visual process, which underscores the defining characteristics of Horasan’s painting, finds its identity through the shock of an absurd mise-en-scène.

This observation will be confirmed by the sexuality-themed paintings that follow a logic of staging and constitute Horasan’s final period. Figures that are at times anonymous and distorted share a space in which explicit sexuality is at issue. In these paintings, where in pursuit of savage effects he seems to observe his terrifying, crude, and thus antipathetic nightmare figures as if positioning them just beyond himself, the quality of interpretation achieved, the brutal character that erodes the painting’s bounds of disclosure, and the dramatic intensity each deserve separate consideration.