Currently on display at Pilot Gallery, Murat Şahinler’s exhibition ‘I have a feeling’ is featuring the recent works of Istanbul based artist until March 23 Hatice UTKAN It is not easy to subject a certain point of view with a painting practice. However, works of Murat Şahinler now on display at Istanbul’s Pilot Gallery, proves the opposite. Şahinler’s paintings and drawings show audiences a point of view of the artists on manhood, society, and loneliness with the images of daily lives that we encounter each day. Şahinler aims to discover a new language that is hidden in a daily life, while he tries to show the hidden images of the daily routine.
Şahinler’s paintings are creating characters, just like a literary oeuvre does, said one of the curator of the exhibition Misal Adnan Yıldız. That’s why the works and the story of them can only be understood with a touch of another artist, Leyla Gediz, who is the other curator of the show. Gediz is one of the talented Turkish artists who is famous with her paintings in the Turkish contemporary art scene. ‘It is a fact that in the recent years painting as an art act has been gone through hard times and began to be understood as a medium that becomes something like a commodity. However, this exhibition proves us the opposite. In Şahinler’s paintings there are many important aspects that cannot make the painting a commodity. The duo, Yıldız and Gediz try to approach the displaying and curating paintings in a more alternative way. Instead of hanging the paintings side by side, they try different displaying techniques. In this case, the life of the artist becomes important. The exhibition is full of details on Şahinler; such as his character his daily life, how he works, what does he think about manhood, how he reacts to the place that he lives and so on. ‘This was an important part of the exhibition,’ said Yıldız, noting that for them it was a must to reflect the artist’s life to the exhibition.’ Because, it is the only way to understand the painting of Şahinler. The combination of Şahinler’s drawing notebooks, notes, pieces of pages from his drawing process are displayed on a table in the gallery and the aim with this installation, which is accompanied by his large dimensioned drawing tells the story of his painting process and his characters that he uses in the paintings. The six meter long painting of Şahinler, gathers his characters, himself and his way of approach to life. Even though all of them are show of his life and his own language in art, this exhibition displays how Yıldız, as a curator and how Gediz, as an artist approach to painting and prefer to reflect it in an exhibition.
The nature of Şahinler’s ever changing paintings reveals his style and language in art as a narrative transformation. As a result the autobiographic elements, personal references in his paintings shows the audiences it is important to know the life of the artist as they discover his or her art. The life of artist also revealed by psychological, social and cultural traces of being an adult and a man today, can be perused through the paintings’ surface and can immediately be recognized when viewed as it were a social data. According to the curators, the questions running parallel to his practice of painting; Şahinler’s relationship with sculpture, sound, poetry, his exercises in architectural thinking, spatial projects and installation solutions/questions passing through his paintings are important part of the exhibition.