Artist Fuat Cağatay likes to search for the deeper meaning of nature and tries to reflect this with his drawings.
Çağatay’s current exhibition opened this week at A.R.K. Kültür in Cihangir. The exhibition entitled “Breath to Breath with Nature” (Doğa ile Nefes Nefese) will continue until Nov. 9.
“I have tried to handle these drawings with expressive aspects and figurative works,” he said in a recent interview with City Brief.
It took almost two years for him to get ready for the exhibition.
“I am in love with nature and I am trying to reflect how human beings are destroying nature,” he said.
The artist tries to draw animals in their own natural environment. “I have tried to simplify and even purify my drawings.”
Çağatay chooses to draw his works in a classical aspect.
The painting art is a new thing for Turkish art scene, according to Çağlayan. “Currently Turkish painting art is still developing and it is also developing in a speculative environment.”
According to the artist, the Turkish art scene is currently being filled with the really good work of young artists. “But I think it will develop [further]. I would like to see the Turkish art where it belongs.”
There are auctions which turns the painting art into a commodity, he added.
“I have never attended those auctions,” he said, adding that making a piece of art a commodity is the choice of an artist.
However, he said, it is expected that this aspect will develop and turn out to be something else.
“I do not want to comment on these kinds of things, it is the job of art historians to comment on things like art value,” he said.
Cağatay was born in Bafra in the Black Sea province of Samsun in 1953 and graduated from the Neset Günal Workshop at the Istanbul State Fine Arts Academy. He took an advanced degree at another workshop in lithography, engraving and linoleum. After living in Stockholm for 20 years, he came to Istanbul, where he painted for the past 10 years.