Monday, January 3, 2011
ISTANBUL-Hürriyet Daily News
January 7 – 29
The new exhibition of Selahattin Yıldırım at the Casa Dell’Arte has an exclusive way to communicate with viewers.
Glancing at Yıldırım’s drawings on white canvass, they might not attract attention at first, but the use of technique and emotion changes the whole scenery while looking at it. Yıldırım shows us that he has lot to say after 25 years in the world of art production.
It is very possible that you might find yourself among the faces in his drawings.
In his new exhibition, titled “Inner Space” (“(H)İÇ YER”), he questions many social and humanistic values, conveying thoughts and emotions into plastic dimensions.
Yıldırım also plays with his works to depict the real meaning that he wants to express. The Turkish language becomes his playground. The exhibition title is a play on two meanings: İç Yer for inner space, but Hiç Yer for non-space. The semantics becomes an important aspect for Yıldırım as he also emphasizes the emptiness that many people in society feel.
He engages himself in an act of complicated and psychological confrontation between the feelings of nothingness.
The artist loves to make viewers think. The helpless and non-sense faces in his paintings are disturbing at first. They are trying to depict the pain, evil and vile nature of human beings.
However, the paintings become increasingly understandable upon closer inspection. The viewer has to analyze the inner meaning of those faces. The faces stand for evil and selfishness.
Yıldırım mostly prefers to reflect people’s dark and evil faces. He loves to play with the human body and it is the main subject in his works.
The artist not only depicts evil faces. In some paintings he tells about the destiny of a woman whose hands have been dyed with henna and tied and in another the destiny of a naked woman squatting down. They are actually one and the same.
Yıldırım always searches for a way to create another pictorial language out of his drawings.
His drawings depict people who do not want to exist. Life and existence become the main question for Yıldırım. He uses ironic symbols while he conveys mixed thoughts in the aphorisms. Focusing mainly on the faces, Yıldırım tries to tell feelings and events through the meanings on the faces.
He tries to use another pictorial language to tell about the expressions that people hide but cannot hide from. Pain is another significant aspect in Yıldırım’s drawings. He tries to reflect the irrepressible pain.