January 24, 2013

EXHIBITION OF SELMA GÜRBÜZ AT RAMPA ISTANBUL




SELMA GÜRBÜZ: LONG NIGHT. FARAWAY VOYAGES AT RAMPA GALLERY ISTANBUL
January 5, 2013 – February 9, 2013




SELMA GÜRBÜZ: LONG NIGHT. FARAWAY VOYAGES AT RAMPA GALLERY ISTANBUL
January 5, 2013 – February 9, 2013
Selma Gürbüz meets viewers with her one-person exhibition at Rampa, “Long Night. Faraway Voyages.”, on January 5–February 9, 2013. The exhibition, composed of Gürbüz’s paintings, drawings, and sculptures realized in 2011–12, displays the visual mythologies of Gürbüz’s extensive art practice.
The works are a continuation of Gürbüz’s mysterious, magical world that we had seen in previous exhibitions. In these large-scale paintings and sculptures, Selma Gürbüz gives a voice to the images she has compiled from both real and dream voyages: the human figures are accompanied by animals and plants; inspiration from ancient Egyptian art, Chinese and Japanese painting traditions, Velazquez, Monet, Islamic miniatures and manuscripts can be traced in the works.
Gürbüz’s art is about images. These images are not purely painterly, but are rather enriched by poetry, fairy tales, and parables. Each painting has its own story; they are not born from stories, but rather have formed their own unique tales. As has been pointed out about Gürbüz’s work, “These paintings stem from a dream in the middle of the night, lit by a full-moon.”
Selma Gürbüz looks at themes derived from history, nature, the subconscious, and mythology—the human figures are quite often alone, displaying animal-like characteristics. This points to them being integrated into nature and that they are protected by nature. Their discomforts and pain express the artist’s own creative process. Recently, figures are situated on the artist’s meticulously woven, dream-like landscapes, integrated as her palette transitions from black to soft hues of brown. Her characters are mysterious and poetic at the same time, inviting the viewer to interrogate and express their inner worlds. We remember what we have seen and on the other side, the reality is not out of our minds; it chases us. By displaying our fears, dreams, and anxieties, Gürbüz actually points to what exists through what is constructed. Perhaps this is why Gürbüz positions herself at the intersection of curiosity and magic.
To see the world within this other world, the viewer does not need glasses. Imagination is more than enough.
http://www.rampaistanbul.com/en/exhibition/long-night-faraway-voyages/




NIGHT. SLEEPING BEAUTIES 2011
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 155 x 300 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




FOOL MOON IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. BRIDGE. SEASIDE. PROMENADE 2011 ( DETAIL )




NOTES
1
It is the imagination that renders habitable the world around us.
Art is the most important source of nourishment for the imagination.
And in turn it is the imagination that feeds art itself.
Ferit Edgü




FOOL MOON IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. BRIDGE. SEASIDE. PROMENADE 2011
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 150 x 260 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




SUNSET. BEFORE & BEYOND 2011
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 200 x 115 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




12. SUNSET.BEFORE & BEYOND.
Her eyes were on her back.
She was so beautiful, so alluring, and her eyes were
On her back.
Those mountains, the peaks, the pastures and the
Meadows, the forests were in front of her.
 She wandered into them.
 She joined them.
Her eyes were on her back –
So that, even if you cannot see her face, she can see
yours.

Ferit Edgü
3
Selma, in her latest long journey is not, like some Western Colonialist, trying to teach her own language to the people living to the East and to the West in this, our world. Instead she is teaching the language of these very people, or rather, the language of this world itself – the language of love, of silence, of music, the language of the night, of the forest and birds and the ever changing and ambiguous language of that process that we call life.
Because she knows that words themselves have limitations she shares what she has learned through images instead.
She shares the things she has learned and has not been able to forget.
Ultimately painting is a recollection.
Ferit Edgü




MORNING.FROG CHATTER 2012
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 155 x 230 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




4
If it is true that thare is no time in painting
What is this night?
What is this full moon?
What is this daylight?
This Spring, this Autumn – what are they?
No, no, time is also there in a painting.
But it is not the ‘’straight time ‘’ of this world.
The time in a painting
Is at the time both yesterday,
Today,
And tomorrow,
For this reason, as I said,
Selma is a contemporary of both the past and the future.
That’s her paintings for you!
Ferit Edgü




NIGHT. FETE IN THE FOREST 2012
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 190 x 270 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




5
Selma takes the molds we are led to believe are unbreakable and smashes them to pieces, she buries concepts in words, blasts geometry into outer space, takes refuge in the creative power of the image and puts her name to paintings that are a meeting ground of the past and the future and which are at the same time both very old and very new.
Ferit Edgü




DAYLIGHT. PATHS. PEOPLE & BRIDGES., 2012 ( DETAIL )




6
Many of the writers and illustrators that we refer to as post – modern do in fact ‘’ create ‘’ their work by benefiting to some degree or other from previously created works of art. For example by using a subject, a painting, by making ( or perhaps not making ) reference to an actual original work, or by re-working it.
There are some examples of this too in some of Selma’s paintings.
A figure from a Manet, a nude ( Olympia ); or a figure from Velasquez’s Meninas or a nude from Cranach, a little touch of a Siyah Qalem work…
But there is a very important distinction between the works of the post – modernists and Selma’s own work: it is as if the works of Manet, Velasquez or Siyah Qalem had never existed, as if Selma had imagined them and called them into being and ascribed them to those artists and then taken them back and made her own paintings.
Ferit Edgü




DAYLIGHT. PATHS. PEOPLE & BRIDGES., 2012
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 150 x 300 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




7
Is the full moon a ‘’ motif ‘’ in these pictures? Or is it a symbol?
In my opinion it is a symbol, but a symbol of more than one thing.
Because in the ‘’ long night ‘’ of history in many different geographical regions and in many different cultures the moon and the sun have inspired a multitude of religions.
I am speaking of the cultures of the Maya, the Aztec, the Egyptians, the Jews, the Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, and of İslam.
For example, in Ancient Egypt the moon was thought to light the dangerous path of the imagination whilst the sun lit up the grand path of the intellect and of objectivity.
And in ancient China the ‘’ Moon Festival ‘’ was one of their three largest celebrations.
In Etruscan art, to which many artists feel immensely drawn, the moon was a symbol of fertility and was used in measurement. The star of the night.
The moon, which does not emit its own rays but instead reflects those of the sun, is Yin whilst the sun is Yang.
And again, if I were to mention that the favored animals of the Chinese Moon are the rabbit and the frog, I might be guilty of leading your interpretations of the paintings, and this I do not wish to do.
Instead, I shall say this much: apart from the Moon which appears as a leitmotif in Selma’s paintings, there are countless elements that carry universally symbolic meaning.
Like the wild geese of Ancient Egypt that were seen as messengers between the sky ( that is to say the gods ) and the earth ( humankind ).
Am I putting forward all these points in order to suggest that Selma is a symbolist painter?
God forbid!
All I wish to point out is this: These paintings have far deeper meaning than is apparent from a first glance.
Ferit Edgü




FOREST. FULL MOON 2012
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 155 x 300 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul










NIJINSKY. REVERIE 2012
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 200 x 115 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul






DREAM OF NIJINSKY
Wood
Dimensions: 84 x 35 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




VOYAGE TO THE EAST. IN THE EAST 2012
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 240 x 122 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




ECHO 2012
Wood
Dimensions: 77 x 50 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul






ALTER EGO 2012
Wood
Dimensions: 110 x 60 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




KUFIC 2011
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 236 x 121.5 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




HONEYMOON 2012
Wood
Dimensions: 145 x 89 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul






DANS. PURIFICATION 2011
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 152 x 260 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul






NYMPH 2012
Wood
Dimensions: 100 x 39 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




EXPANSE. LOST. 2011
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 238 x 120 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




NARCISSE 2012
Wood
Dimensions: 137 x 122 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul






VALENTINE 2012
Wood
Dimensions: 140 x 114 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




SUN PARASOL WOMAN 2012
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 240 x 122 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul






SELMA GÜRBÜZ
WRITING BY FERİT EDGÜ
Selma Gürbüz is an artist unique amongst her contemporaries. One has to look not to our times but instead much deeper into a far distant past in order to find works that can be compared to hers. Selma is an expert at conjuring into being the so far hidden image. She crates worlds from imaginary creatures of legend, from ghosts, genies and fairies; from black, white or grey magic, from the Alchemists’ Mundus Elementaris, and from the enduring threads of the Tales of 1001 Nights. She also draws inspiration from Karagöz shadow puppetry, from shamans and spells, from Divination books, Astrology books and from the mystical figures portrayed by the 15 th century artist Siyah Qalem. She creates her art by starting from these reference points and yet moves towards rather than away from them. She summons these ancient kith and kin to our times and even into a future beyond our present.
Selma creates a world of her own; or, more accurately one should say an ethnography, a mythology, and legend all her own. The creatures she carries over from the darkness of the Middle Ages perform their shamanic dances upon a fur pelt of modernity. And theirs is such a shamanic celebration that I find myself thinking I am mistaken and that they have come from the future rather than from the past. I Can’t be sure about the art of the future; but will it not be born from these types of images that seem with their patterns, words, scenes, events, and appearances to change destiny by challenging that which already exists and making known the unknown?
If every ending in the sphere of art is at the same time a new beginning, then why not?
Andre Breton, in the incomparable L’Art Magique, his last piece before his death begs the same questions as Valentine of Alexandria: ‘’ What is the purpose of the image? ‘’
The image, or as is inferred here, representation, is a concept which many artists have long since put up on the shelf.
 But in art no issue, moreover no representation will stay on the shelf for ever.
So now we see Selma, hundreds of years later, asking the same question as Valentine of Alexandria. And she gives an answer that differs greatly from Breton’s: not with words, but with reprasantations. I feel that she is saying: Represantations are the new born twins of living things. But they have nothing in common with living things. Because I have not created them in their likeness, I have created them from my imagination.
The full moon that lights up the night sky, lakes, streams, oceans, ocean beds…
The night that knows no end.
The creatures of the land and the sea: Panthers, native girls, scrubland roosters, fishermen, fish, frogs.
People. Men and women.
Bridges. Roads.
From East to West: West to East.
I sincerely hope that there are still others today who believe, as I do, that knowledge and intelligence remain incomplete and insufficient without the greatest force of the human mind – the power of the imagination. Because only such people will be able to access the truths portrayed in stories, legends, myths and fables only they will be able to participate in the journey on which Selma is inviting them and they alone will perceive the hidden meanings in these works. By creating these works Selma shares with us the memories that have remained with her from epic journeys sha has undertaken and from her experiences during long – drawn nights.
Which night?
Which journey?
The pictures give the answers to these questions.
Only those who have pushed their imagination to its limits, and who have abandoned concepts and learned to think in images without preconceptions, without superficial logic, only those people will correctly interpret what is being presented to us from this long night and these epic journeys.
In order to fully understand these works that have been created by weaving together the past and the future by the pushing back and forth of a shuttle on the loom of time, one must consider the long journeys linking geography and history, linking the art of Japan and China, Etruscan art and Ancient Egyptian art and linking Ottoman art to the art of the Asian steppe. Every great work of art that actually alters a person comes into being as a result of such great journeys.












DISTANCES. PROMENADE 2011
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 240 x 122 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




HARVEST 2012 ( DETAIL )




THE PAINTINS IN WORDS
Many of Selma’s previous exhibition catalogues have one thing in common: The writers
( and I include among them the author of these very lines ) do not examine, describe, or explain the paintings from the perspective of an art critic, but instead write pieces inspired by the world that these paintings create. They  have let go, as far as they dared, of the reins of their guided by the paintings themselves.
They have not pursued the meaning of the meaning of the paintings themselves but instead have followed the story of the paintings own existence; they have then related that story to the best of their ability.
I do not imagine that this is a coincidence.
I too feel that this is the right way forward – to think ( or should I say to imagine ) in terms of images rather than concepts, to perceive rather than to expound upon and to try to bring into words that which one has perceived – thus creating a bridge between oneself and the paintings.
I am not commenting, using words; rather I wish to present a form of the inspiration that has come to me from this world in front of me.
It is as if the painting wishes me to do this. It is as if what I am supposed to say is murmuring to me at the edge of silence. But that is all.
And I try to comply with this request.
Only in this way can both myself and the paintings become subjects and objects in the same world.
Just like it sometimes happens in dreams.
Ferit Edgü




HARVEST 2012
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 155 x 230 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




7. DISTANCES. PROMENADE.
The painter, upon holding a mirror to her face sees
Neither herself nor another.
In astonishment she begins to paint that face which
Belongs to no one.
As she paints, that face becomes hers and that of another
That is to say, everyone.
Ferit Edgü




IN THE FOREST. I SEE, I DO NOT SEE, I SEE 2011
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 155 x 230 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




ASENA 2011
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 155 x 300 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul




8. NIGHT. SLEEPING BEAUTIES.
There were eleven women.
Eleven women had lustrous black hair.
Eleven women awoke from sleep and shook out their
Hair.
Eleven women met in one place and made contact
( became a painting )
Eleven women were happy and unhappy.
And all eleven women fell in love.
Ferit Edgü




MORNING. WILD ROOSTERS 2012
 Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 153 x 301 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul






KING KONG 1,2,3 – 2012
Bronzo
112 x 90 x 65 cm ( King Kong 1 )
136 x 85 x 65 cm ( King Kong 2 )
120 x 105 x 95 cm ( King Kong 3 )
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul






RED MOON. WILD GEESE 2012
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 153 x 300 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul









NIGHT. TO SEE THE FOREST 2012
Ink on Handmade Paper
Dimensions: 155 x 300 cm
© Courtesy the Artist & Rampa Istanbul












SELMA GÜRBÜZ
Selma Gürbüz (1960) was born in İstanbul, Turkey. After having studied at Exeter College of Art Design between 1980-1982, she graduated from Marmara University Fine Arts Faculty in 1984.
Her recent solo exhibitions include “Carnivalesque”, Rampa, Istanbul (2017); “Intemporel”, Galeri Nev, Ankara (2016); “Daydream”, Rampa, Istanbul (2014); “Long Night. Faraway Voyages.”, Rampa, Istanbul (2013); “Mind’s Eye”, Lawrie Sahbibi Gallery, Dubai (2011); “Shadows of Myself”, Rose Issa Projects at Leighton House Museum, London (2011); “Archetypes”, Warehouse (Antrepo) No: 3, İstanbul (2010), “Sunny Shadows”, Gallery Apel, İstanbul (2008) and Makii Masaru Fine Arts, Tokyo (2007); “Feline I”, Galerie Maeght, Paris (2006); “Feline II”, Gallery Apel, İstanbul (2006); “The Fairy and the Genie”, Gallery Apel, İstanbul (2004), “Yünname”, Gallery Apel, İstanbul (2000) and “Karaname”, Gallery Apel, İstanbul (1999).
Gürbüz has also participated in many national and international group exhibitions including “Small Faces, Large Sizes”, Proje 4L Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul (2015); “Another Time, Another Place”, Rose Issa Projects, London (2013); “Artists in Their Time” (2015-2016), “Dream and Reality” (2011), “From Traditional to Contemporary” (2010), “New Works, New Horizons” (2009) and “Modern Experiences” (2008), İstanbul Modern, İstanbul; “Cara a Cara” (travelling show), with Marco Del Re, Galerie Maeght, Paris and Barcelona (2003); “Fantaisies du Harem et les Nouvelles Shéhérazades” (travelling show), Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona and Museum of Natural History, Lyon (2003); “Le Cirque” (travelling show), Gérard-Georges Lemaire, Editions Eric Koehler, Athenee-Theatre Louis Jouvet, Paris, Espace Mira Phalaina, Montreuil and Novomestka Radnice, Prague (1996). Her other projects include “Shadow theatre design for ‘More Wind’”, Portside Gallery, Yokohama (2005) and “Futurist Stage Curtain Design”, Revues Parlées, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1996).“Automatic Games”, Kwangju Biennale, Korea (1995) and “L’Orient des Cafés” (travelling show), French Cultural Centre, Cairo, Alexandria, Athens, Thessaloniki, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv (1992).
Selma Gürbüz lives and works in İstanbul, Turkey.
http://www.rampaistanbul.com/en/artist/selma-gurbuz/#works_in_exhibition_4991