faceless serıes no 140 Painting

1968 Born in Istanbul 1989-1993 Graduated from Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Graphics at Marmara University. 1993-1996 Completed his master degree with Consultant of Mustafa Aslıer. 2007 Established Utopya Platform Art Gallery. 2014 Works his own workshop in Kızıltoprak, Istanbul. Faceless Series; Lost Bodies of the Renaissance Starting point for the Faceless Series is Gazi Sansoy's great admiration to the Renaissance paintings and his desire to exist within them. Works he created with this humane and childish passion have extended their limits to human history, art history and consumption culture in time. Sansoy's modern intervention to European classics resembles our effort to cut out those whom we do not want in the picture and instead put those we like and even ourselves in the picture. This intervention, humorous in character, bases on a naive schizophrenic motivation which as old as the human history. In Faceless Series, Sansoy takes spectacular examples of European painting during Renaissance (especially 16th and 17th century Italy) and prints them on canvas with digital printing. In a way, he erases the figure from paintings whose basic element is the figure. He only deletes visible parts of skin of the figure with his skilful colouring. What remain are decoration, scenery, empty clothes, and a huge emptiness waiting to be filled. To represent himself, the artist fills the emptiness turned into stained areas with pop colours which he loves with passion. He brings himself into existence in these paintings with wide coloured areas replacing the figure. Renaissance artists face realism, observation and rational thinking by getting through of puritan, normative, and strict thinking of the Middle Ages. Realist constructions and stages replace unreal and idealized stages of the Middle Ages designed for presenting the ideal beauty. We can read all feelings from the body and face expressions of the figures. Natural lights and shades flutter around the paintings. Descriptions are based on observation. "Ideal" descriptions, ideas, and beliefs in Medieval paintings give their way to the Renaissance own reality. In Faceless Series, Sansoy takes the ideal figure out of these figure-dominated paintings and puts completely foreign colours in empty clothes representative of a stranger. Contrary to the strong shade and light effects of the paintings, these foreign colours are completely homogenous.