Gönül Sen-Menzel Introduces Contemporary Art from Turkey

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Paderborn. The paintings of contemporary art from Turkey needed a second attempt to leave the country before they could, after all, be presented to the public at the Städtische Galerie on Friday, just in time.

The vaulted room of the redesigned gallery, this year “only a substitute” for the exhibition space of Volksbank Paderborn, proved to be an atmospheric setting for the works of the three master students of Istanbul’s “Academy of Fine Arts”. In her lecture, Gönül Sen-Menzel outlined the core idea of each artist.

“Out of a feeling of unease, Ezgi Yemenicioglu is searching for paradise.” Her “Hero” is a giant, facing nature – which is also his origin – on the other side of the picture. But where the trees seem alive, he leaves a mechanical impression. Yemenicioglu repeatedly draws on landscape structures in pastel and strong pink hues, from which figures emerge in shadowy lines. Just when the viewer vaguely believes they see a couple united, another, black figure already seems to be reaching for happiness.

An Escape from Hopelessness

“For Gönül Karakan, the incidence of light is more than color.” In abstraction she seeks an escape from hopelessness. She uses blue-green tones in particular to express sibling-like harmony. One of her landscapes leaves an impression of blurring, of every structure dissolving through lack of focus. Emek Can Tülüs confronts contradictions with one another in his worlds and seeks to find new possibilities in chaos. He works with symbols; his pictures sometimes look like collages in which strictly geometric forms meet free painting (paint is applied straight from the tube onto the canvas). “Red Vibration” evokes a harbor quay. The face of a white figure is given an eye like a target, one arm a circular shield, the other an elliptical, patched-together something reminiscent of a sword. A signal of defense and attack at the same time.

The pictures of the young Turkish artists show today’s critical engagement of artists with their surroundings – an important contribution to the Turkish cultural days. The avant-garde pictures can be seen at the Städtische Galerie until September 30, Tuesdays to Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Original caption: Turkish art: present at the exhibition opening were Dr. Günter Reimund, deputy CEO of Volksbank Paderborn, Gönül Karakan, Gönül Sen-Menzel (who gave the introductory lecture), Ezgi Yemenicioglu, Emek Can Tülüs and Mayor Heinz Paus (from left).