turan aksoy: a narrative dedicated to impossible integrities

MÜMTAZ SAĞLAM

In fact; when we distinguish the definitions for private and psychic space which vary in social system, we’ll notice that Aksoy’s paintings are also engaged with stimulations correspond to changing desire policies, while reflecting blurring moral hierarchy. Revealing themselves indirectly, hybrid forms and spaces are in a constant resistance due to heterodox visual language and aesthetics that become prominent in Aksoy’s paintings.

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In his paintings, Turan Aksoy is in pursuit of psychic meanings reflecting his straits. Making figures, spaces, and objects inconsistent by means of a particular perception defying logic, he acts with a clear feeling of disbelief. He shows an approach that centralises intellectual energy produced by consciousness, having a tendency to employ deformation and abstraction prominently. His continuous plain language corresponds to the conflicting integrity of chaotic and sterile. Therefore, his determination in forming preferences or his transition of thoughts flowing over selected objects is maintained by such conflict.

the fiction abolishing representation hierarchy

Aksoy tries to create a situation or a game of unrelatedness with a sense of isolation. Thus, he leads the plotline that develops the narrative beyond common approaches. He makes the unrelatedness condition – an enclosed story, which reveals itself at this stage, the main element of the narrative. In the contact established between the unsettled, strained context and the viewer, there’s a matter of a will that sets itself aside. Aksoy seems like he’s employing an imagination style that withstands giving itself away, practically drags the whole course into a deadlock.

Turan Aksoy’s emotionally intense analyses pull viewers to its offbeat visual atmosphere from the start. Viewers are exposed to an isolated and muted environment with figures and objects that destroy the environment. Moreover, a condition of miscommunication that we hardly make sense of, as a halting point, positions us against itself. Herein, first of all, it should be noted that the condition of alienation, which seems to be the reason or the result of unrelatedness in question, is determinant in relieving the artist’s introvert orientation as a radical manner. Therefore, objects designed and presented as icons of solitude, putting their denotations off, are drawn into the depth of the autobiographical story. So, such a reduced imagination code that is offered by avoiding all emphasis methods becomes a part of debates for common problems, while getting stubborn in its own specific area with the internal energy that the code created. For instance; using metaphors like “eye case” and “tongue box”, it might be asserted that Aksoy has developed a discourse which reverses our intellect and our perceptual habits for deep-rooted sense of gender, or which excludes such sense and express it within the feeling of victimhood. In his works which he reinforces with an influential intellect revealing itself through images and objects, Aksoy mainly criticises the current system of morals and values with a humorous language.

unusual proposals dividing space and time

Turan Aksoy adopts an actual attitude by disrupting perceptual integrity and pushing it to an odd dimension. Therefore; within the scope of the symbolic language he has developed, stresses laid on space and time are likely to be engaged to the content generated through a discourse with regards to social and political references, or sexuality. Such a notional background that prioritises poignant togetherness of ironic and authentic allows us refer to a conception of space vibrant with metaphysic connotations and a time that compressed. A temporal uncertainty depends on possibilities spontaneously emerges while the artist locates figures and environment in a counterintuitive continuum. Hence, such narratives are not in reference to now and they deny the regular integrity of a rational process. Determinations seem to be fragmental and irrelevant present disconnectedness as an expression value, through the visual language. Thus, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the dimmed and uncertain expression pervading Aksoy’s paintings strengthens the psychic effects through the direct language created. It’s also clear that the imagination partly turning into projection forces our minds with the symbols of an isolated and subdued resistance (such as bunk bed and medicine cabinet). This simplification is the result of an effort that problematises the fiction. Immediateness and spontaneity describing the process refer to prime values that basically associates the expression with autobiography. Because such isolated, oppressed, and also distorted images, which do not represent their own reality with psychic foresights, are already customised due to be built-up on a paradoxical existence notion.

In this respect, Turan Aksoy’s paintings, relevant to the process to a large extent, become clearer through some private conditions’ delicate indicators. Having been built on anonymous witnesses cancelling references, such an envisagement has already been transformed substantially into an odd and cold space that we can’t even dare to get involved.

trauma and distance: profound content drifting toward absurd

On the other hand, intention of reduction manifested in Turan Aksoy’s paintings implies the act of identifying the object in its simplest form. Herein, the determinant desire of intervention is likely to be the precondition of forming directly. Such a desire that make delicacy dominant over fictive formation rather establishes the integrity of the story covering the painting. The story is interlaced with delicate and solid messages that are contradicting with modern typology. The subject adopts an critical attitude due to be identified with weakness, and confessions that make life and art vain. Aksoy’s attempt might be described as an effort to identify the time we live by in the context of institutional structures and subject. He wants us to get involved to the field of a series of works that are clearly in reference to results of unconnected individual and society, traumatic circumstances, with irrational affiliations. Portraits that made up the overall scope of his latest works become clear as a profound representation for the condition of unrelatedness, while portraying his own anxiety. In the moments of blurring collective memory, they take shape with the devastation they cause. Thus; fuelling with the culture of being alienated, a viewpoint that has been caught between trauma and isolation offers new definitions.

Interpretations adjoining the notions of innocence, evil, death, and love, which are turning upside down private life through corrupted and romantic connections are converted to the visual language as the signifier of this very anomalous language and spatial dimension of the parodical depiction. Paintings reflecting an inner-world that is made colourless and dimensionless, crystallize as strong alienation icons. Transacted spaces and figurative elements become metaphysic paraphrases that are implying a mental break. Likewise, portrait that is formed conversely nearly petrifies as a monument of discomfort with its increasingly hardening appearance.

In fact; when we distinguish the definitions for private and psychic space which vary in social system, we’ll notice that Aksoy’s paintings are also engaged with stimulations correspond to changing desire policies, while reflecting blurring moral hierarchy. Revealing themselves indirectly, hybrid forms and spaces are in a constant resistance due to heterodox visual language and aesthetics that become prominent in Aksoy’s paintings.

Getting able to reach the inner world of Turan Aksoy and to grasp the meaning he intends to indicate are only possible by perceiving them through the concepts or contexts of destruction and violation. The symbolic value of objects that represent his state of mind might be considered as delicate indicators testing our integrity. Such sallow symbolic structures, which are simplified by structural interventions, gradually build Aksoy’s narrative on an abstract space. Drawing away from the manifestation of the style, hereby, the object confined to non-functionality or isolation of the image attractively invites us to their parallel universe.

Indeed, Turan Aksoy’s distinctive stories always attract us with their staggering and devastating characteristics. Loneliness and uneasiness that we felt in the moment of encounter with this sterile world located in a gap of dreadful contact is another subject we need to consider.

February 2013, Istanbul. (Translated by Cüneyt Tabanoğlu)

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