"white cock" Painting

Betul Merkan was born in Istanbul and contunies her works in her workshop in Kuzguncuk. about the works: I usually made use of the objects I found in the junkman and wrecker shops, such as burned pieces of wooden houses and industrial barrels. I sometimes pressed these objects, burned them out or pulled them apart. Appending one object to another, I occasionally superposed them and I got three dimensional columns, which create the feeling of being “in-between”. These works, at many times, returned to the places where I first encountered them, that is to the wrecker and junkman services. As a result, I parted company with these objects. To be honest, this separation did not make me sad. In the following term of my works, I used different materials to paint on surfaces of the objects. Among those different materials are the polyester reliefs flying out of the surface and the layers of paper. In my recent works, I turned back to my very own “internal” world, giving up the interference with the waste products of the modern capitalist world. I tried to resist the compulsions of the “external” world. I became comfortably numb towards works, which are undoubtedly accepted as “trendy”; thus, I got socially isolated. My current works have been shaped during this “isolation” period. In the beginning, I made sculptures in natural environments without doing harm to the nature. These sculptures made me travel deep inside myself by experiencing some mystical aspects of the life. My travel resulted in the reification of urban stacks, domes, various reptiles, and not easily definable symbols on the surface. Unsatisfied with the paints themselves, I chose to work on surfaces by pressing the materials in a harsh way. Sewing the materials, which would not undermine the most likely and the most familiar solitude, I fixed them on the painted surfaces. Sometimes I only sewed them without painting the surfaces. The act of sewing enables me to fix the symbols and figures reified on the canvas in a flash, and to spend more time with them. Extending the time, I focus on my work, enter the instant creation, and merge with the gracious feminine vehemence. All acts of reification move on through a non-predetermined intuition. I like to get lost in the masses, to be travelling while being lost, and to create a balance of this imaginary dump. Therefore, I sometimes feel myself as a shaman thrown to the era we are currently living in.