Master Silk Road: Kashgar Painting

Hello all! My name is Caner Karavit. I was born in Edirne and raised in Ankara. Currently, I live in Istanbul. Journey of my artistic outlook could be periodized in two stages. First, the contemporary art-related performances, paintings and printmakings that I executed with domestic and foreign art groups. This period corresponds to my higher art education at Istanbul Fine Arts Academy. In both group performances and individual works, the influence of the Western contemporary art, that I was provided during my art education, was intense. The themes of my Western-style contemporary art works were contributed by the layers of the cultural geography in which I was raised. Second stage is deeply affected by the Chinese art, on which I had education from 2007 on in China. During the first years of my presence in China, in Tsinghua University that I worked with a scholarship, I studied woodcut which is one of the oldest arts in China. In following years, I did research on Chinese Buddhist art and took lectures from Liu Hanshi who is a renowned Chinese painting master. These works and studies of mine rendered me with a comparison between the Western and Eastern art, and a synthesis of them both. Studying both of the artistic waves, not only I observed the differences in use of materials but also the differences in mindsets, with their artistic elements and installations. Accordingly, my studies in China changed my perspective towards the composition. The Chinese philosophy of time and space that influenced Chinese art, in turn predominantly influenced the abovementioned change in my understanding of composition. In this context, focusing on element of line, I reflect the places inversed to convert Chinese concept of time into space.