About Me

Mate­ri­als

The mate­ri­als I use are very impor­tant to me. I am explor­ing their power and their poten­tial; how water, wax, thin­ner, bitu­men, shel­lac and paint react with each other, and their effect on the paper or wood. The paints, the chem­i­cals in my hand, have an energy of their own; they com­bine to build new colours; it is a process, a phys­i­cal exper­i­ment. I let the chem­i­cals go into the paper, inves­ti­gat­ing the phys­i­cal char­ac­ter and limits of the mate­ri­als.

When I am work­ing I feel the mate­ri­als and try to stay con­nected with that sen­sa­tion and allow my feel­ings and the mate­ri­als to guide the result. I feel for the reac­tions among the mate­ri­als; these are also com­pa­ra­ble with sim­i­lar reac­tions in nature on a larger scale.

The end result of these vig­or­ous phys­i­cal inter­ac­tions is calm, still and quiet.

Work

At the heart of my recent work is an inves­ti­ga­tion into the rela­tion­ship between the tan­gi­ble and the intan­gi­ble and our abil­ity to express or recog­nise one in the other.

I have curved flat sur­faces of Som­er­set paper into three-dimen­sional objects — cre­at­ing a cross between paint­ing and sculp­ture that has given a dif­fer­ent scope to my work. Putting two-dimen­sional work in three dimen­sions cre­ates an inner space within the work that cannot be per­ceived; and an outer space that is shared with the observer.

The heavy paper is trans­formed by the chem­i­cals in the paint and thin­ner, pen­e­trat­ing the sur­face to create some­thing new. In some cases smoke is used, cap­tur­ing the dying moment in the cre­ation of frac­tal shapes on the paper. Their exis­tence con­nects with my momen­tary exis­tence, over­lap­ping briefly in time with the mate­ri­als to create some­thing new and inde­pen­dent.

The work is what it is, with its own sombre pres­ence, char­ac­ter and grav­ity. It is non-rep­re­sen­ta­tional, a com­bi­na­tion of paper and other ele­ments, stand­ing on its own merits.

Pro­file

The Tri­an­gle of Pol­i­tics, Cul­ture and Reli­gion are cen­tral to my devel­op­ment as an artist. Born in Istan­bul and edu­cated in Turkey and Ger­many, later living in the Far East, the Middle East, and now res­i­dent in London, I’ve been involved in and affected by dif­fer­ent cul­tures at each stage. My work con­cerns itself with the real­ity of exis­tence and links to my other inter­ests in sci­ence and the uni­verse, the ele­ments of nature and other nat­u­rally occur­ring forms.

Diploma in German Lit­er­a­ture & Lan­guage
Istan­bul Uni­ver­sity, Turkey

MA in Fine Arts
City & Guilds of London Art School, Britain

In 2010, I was elected to The London Group, a London-based col­lec­tive of artists with a long and proud his­tory of over 90 years and served a term as Vice Pres­i­dent.

Short interview about my process