| In his latest exhibition Meeting the Mirror at The Marmara Pera Gallery Art and Life in Istanbul, Ahmet Yeşil confronts spectators with their own existence: their appearances, feelings, actions, surroundings, dependencies, desires, fears, needs and ability to comprehend. He sends viewers on an emotional journey consisting of oil paintings that are beautiful and shaking at the same time. Meeting the Mirror’s aim is to encourage viewers to conceive their perception and thinking as interactions in today’s world. |
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Facing our Reflections
In his latest exhibition Meeting the Mirror at The Marmara Pera Gallery Art and Life in Istanbul, Ahmet Yeşil confronts spectators with their own existence: their appearances, feelings, actions, surroundings, dependencies, desires, fears, needs and ability to comprehend. He sends viewers on an emotional journey consisting of oil paintings that are beautiful and shaking at the same time. Meeting the Mirror’s aim is to encourage viewers to conceive their perception and thinking as interactions in today’s world.
“The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them“, (Albert Einstein).
What sort, or which level, of thinking will be more right-minded then? Is it reflection? Is it self-reflection? Shall we examine our own internal processing mechanisms? The artist Ahmet Yeşil is provoking: “Finding, dating, coming together, discovering, self-reflection, encountering people’s mere and unique emotions and phenomena…” he has constituted in the Manifesto, which accompanies the exhibition. “Every second, we meet face to face with life’s realities; they meet us as opposite hand. […] amongst the reflections we encounter ourselves.”
Yeşil`s paintings are like tickets to (our) souls. When looking at and reflecting in front of them, the observer is drawn to the marrow of life. Whether the two little egg-shaped figures in the blue circle, which are depicted in About Blue II, are sperm cell and ovum under a microscope, waiting to be fused for fertilization in a future world, or whether the cells are the observer him-, or herself respectively at the beginning of life; whether, in Opposite Lifestyles, that one clothes-pin in the spotlight, the only one of many on a line, that hangs upright, is a star, and whether the viewer would secretly wish to be it; whether, in Small Pleasures, the color-spots are cars on a multi-lane motorway; whether, in the blue canvas, the wave is the tunnel, which the spectator encountered in yesterday’s nightmare…
It is inevitable for the visitors to stay intact in the atmosphere created by the show. The paintings, on the other hand, are mere tickets, mirrors, stiff artistic objects, which remain outside the viewers` process of self-reflection. They have the same effect like a mirror, which is an opposite-hand only but leaves reflection to the observer. “Even if the mirror does not want them it will still catch them, absorb their inside and, in unexpected partnership, they will thrust upon joint perception.” (exhibition` s Manifesto)
For the less prehensile visitors of Meeting the Mirror, who are searching in vain for the mirror in the exhibition space, Yeşil provides a prism. The installed painted pentagonal prism is showing everyday life images like people and cars on streets. As prism, it is a mirror in the way that it reflects real events by means of physical transmission. What is more, being an artificial prism, Yeşil also draws the viewers` attention to the further meaning of reflection, namely that which appears as a result of the in-between dialectic relationship of interior and exterior. Thus, the prism’s reflections are supportive reflections that accommodate the meeting between the show’s art works and both the sensible, and the insensible viewer, whose thoughts are driven away by everyday solicitudes.
The corybantic and yet somehow atrabilious feature of tied strings occurs not only in the paintings presented in Meeting the Mirror but in almost all of the artist’s works. At first sight, the strings seem like snakes, burdens, chains, everything negative one can imagine; sometimes, as in the painting Perilous Relationships, which depicts a razor blade, they are too strong and numerous to be torn apart and finally defeated. However, on a second glance, it becomes clear that without strings there would be no images. The artist uses ties like paint almost. And slowly, the strings reveal their abundant color, unique beauty, and patterns. One even finds broken ties and suddenly feels sorry, for this one fissure makes the entire string useless. The viewers are free to fantasise… Yeşil, in his Manifesto, recommends “making friends with the image in the mirror and the powers of our reflections as this constitutes freedom in our minds.”
Ahmet Yeşil was born in Mersin, Turkey, in 1956. After an accident in 1972, due to which he lost his ability to walk, Nuri Abaç, İlhan Çevik, and Emür Tüzün encouraged him to engage in arts and became his mentors. Today, Yeşil`s art works are found in museums, private collections, state institutions, and companies all over the world. To date, Yeşil has had 279 group shows and 64 solo exhibitions.
© Selma Stern 2007
Further information:
• Ahmet Yesil, website: www.ahmetyesil.com
• Meeting the Mirror, 14 June – 15 July 2007, The Marmara Pera Gallery Art and Life, Meşrutiyet Cad., Tepebaşı, Beyoğlu, Istanbul 34430, Turkey, phone: 0090-212-2939150, fax: 0090-212-2939150, website: www.artandlife.com.tr , e-mail: info@artandlife.com.tr
