"Old Olive Tree 2" Sculpture

Themes of my work, either in two dimensional paintings or in three dimensional forms, change over time. My inner emotions, experiences and perceptions, are converted into an artistic expression through color, texture and form. Whether in the series of « Tears of Bosnia » which was inspired by sad social events in 1990ies or in the series of « Whirling Dervishes » depicting divine spiritual thoughts carrying me gradually from figurative to abstract in oil painting, I always concentrated on color and texture. As I tended towards sculptural forms in recent years, color and texture still persisted in my work as a result of my long history of oil painting. As form and content developed I found it quite appealing to use media other than paint to obtain color and texture which had the potential to contribute to artistic expression. This led to a natural passage from two to three dimensional works. Fishnets captured my attention with their textures and rich color and plastic potential. I collected them from fishing villages around Istanbul. Combining them with other materials, I experimented in the search of a new artistic language. My first experiments gave way to 3D tableaux as I worked in layers. I did not paint over the fishnets because as collected from the fishermen, their colors were already rich and varied with the potential of conveying an "enduring" feeling. As the depth of three dimensional works increased, transparence and textural elements augmented and improved the plastic expression. Wishing to emphasize depth and transparency, I used iron frame structures thus creating « soft sculptures». In contrast to media that exploit modern technological devices which are used widely in contemporary art, fishnets remain modest. In my compositions they recede from their traditional functions and find a completely new identity. Recycled fishnets in parallel to their new identity as an artistic expression, still continue reflecting their own message in the background, by bringing to mind environmental and sustainability problems, pollution of waters and extinction of species. I think this nature of fishnets adds a conceptual aspect to my work and enriches its expression.