The meaning of “still life,” “digital images” and “existence” is about to change with a new exhibition at Sanatorium.
Yağız Özgen’s solo exhibition entitled “Still Life” questions the digital life in a “real” way as the typical still-life paintings that we have seen for many years are changing with the artist’s new works.
Still lifes are typically described as art that mostly depicts inanimate subject matter, such as commonplace objects that could be natural (food, flowers, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes and the like).
Özgen, however, opens a new dimension for the form of art, carrying the act of creating art to another level with his light boxes and still-life portraits that look like Windows desktop or digital images.
In fact, Özgen focuses on the digital age and technology, but instead of giving messages like “the Internet or technology is bad for your health,” he draws his own interpretations of digital copies and creates still-life portraits and light boxes out of them.
Speaking about Özgen’s works, Can Ertaş, one of the resident artists of Sanatorium, said: “Yağız Özgen’s works simply focus on his perception of the digital age and digital images. He takes the digital images in the digital environment and treats them as conventional still lifes or landscapes.”
Özgen uses oil color technique when he draws his digital images on his canvas. “He shows us the image on our computer’s desktop can also be perceived as a landscape,” said Ertaş.
“In his works he also questions the genesis. For example, he re-created Adam’s hand drawn by Michelangelo and currently found in the Sistine Chapel.”
Özgen also refers to science fiction in his works, and the young artist uses different disciplines in the process of creation, such as lightboxes, oil colors, performance art and video art.
Existing without limits
Özgen objectifies digital images and makes them resemble people’s daily lives. As a result, digital images break their limits and boundaries and begin to exist on another level that opens another dimension for people and for art.
The art and Özgen’s perception may open a new level of understanding for “being.” Genesis, with the works of art on another level, can all be combined with existence and “being.”
Connecting the conventional oil color paintings with our new visual culture is like a parody of old habitual art.
Özgen likes to show us how the artificial turns out to be natural and vice versa, while he also shows us ways of “being” and “existence” with digital images in a more real way.
“According to today’s aesthetic and visual perception, these paintings are the simplest forms of traditional themes, but it should not be forgotten that they include the alienating effect of ‘artificial intelligence,’” according to writer Esra Aliçavuşoğlu.
Avoiding expressing himself through clichés, Özgen may be the next best thing for Turkey’s art scene. Looking through the other side of the glass and seeing different ways of existence and drawing them may be very “serious” acts for a 23-year-old artist. However, Özgen proves that he perceives life in a different way while creating his works.