Artists define communication with the viewer with paintings

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Neşe Şive Baydar’s and Şebnem Somel’s work may offer a certain impression when looked at for the first time. However, as the viewer peruses the rest of the exhibition showcased at the Mabeyn Art Gallery, the viewer’s initial interpretations and assumptions may change.

Both artists are in search of something they want to discover. Through her exhibition “Between Two Things,” Baydar focuses on the relationship between two objects, as well as the abstract and pregnant quality of the space that exists in between. Her paintings seem to suggest she is looking for the things which could or may happen, things which maybe never have happened before, or are waiting to happen.

 “The ‘thing’ between two things is abstract. The relation between two concrete things is abstract,” she said. Baydar employs concrete objects or figures and then plays with the conceptual possibility of the area in between them. Baydar quotes Alain Badiou as she explains herself and her works: “Two relations occur between unknowable things.” This is what the viewer should search for in Baydar’s works.

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“For me, painting is an area encouraging thought-provoking and free associations. I would be interested in anything and everything beyond definition that can revive associations. Likewise, the process of painting; there is no relation of supremacy between painting and me,” Baydar said.
She tries to encourage the viewer to question notions of objective reality. “Sometimes a painting on canvas finishes before it is finished in my mind. I am much more interested in this level of consciousness,” said Baydar.

The special technique of ‘Lavi’ guides both the artists in their approach to dealing with the light in their paintings, as well as the light in the gallery. Discussing Baydars paintings, artist Burcu Pelvanoğlu said, “Wilhelm Worringer’s theory probably explains Baydar’s ‘Lavi’ the best. Worringer tells us that behind each work of art lies an absolute art system externalizing and objectivizing a subject, and this is the impulse of abstraction.”

According to Baydar, true meaning realizes itself in the viewer’s mind but, “in order to have relation with the artwork or with the art, the viewer should have knowledge of other art branches, such as literature, music and plastic arts.”

Art should have a very powerful communication with the viewer. “Currently, artists follow other artists,” she said.

Somel’s work, meanwhile, has four different stages. She tries to make them visible in different terms. In the present exhibition, she presents pieces from the “Watery Heroes” section of her “Bosporus Dreams” series. “Bosporus Dreams” is a visual accumulation of paintings, illustrations, videos, photographs and texts that are to be published in a book.

The “Watery Heroes” are illusions carried away in their own dreams and are colorful visions combined with the grey and blurred perspective of Bosphorus sightseeing.

Istanbul, fine art, contemporary,