PEACEFUL OCCUPATION / “Barışcıl Kuşatma” adlı kitapdan
İSTANBUL 2000
ABSOLUTE MAN VERSUS ABSTRACT SPACE IN MEHMET GÜLER’S PICTURES
Prof. Dr. Kaya Özsezgin
I
While examining along consecutive periods Mehmet Güler’s pictures accompanied by figural abstraction intending to produce subordinate meanings with relations between human and nature, we witness elements reminding us anthropological thought that dominates the neolithic wall pictures and the tradition of description in the following ages. The covered exhibition of the figure may be explained by those elements. Expanding the ritual phenomenon of “reaching Mystery” in Central Asian Shaman belief through Eskimo lands and American traditions evidences that intellectual phases related to understand physical and metaphysical realities come from the effort to penetrate into the essence of the unknown. Populations’ diffusing incentive of catching secret meanings behind natural forms provides us with clues which illuminate on the importance of that effort. The Eskimoan shaman for instance calls out to his circle (1): “All my body became an eye. Look. Do not be afraid. I am looking everywhere all at once. “.What is more, he often goes on overexciting journeys. Looking everywhere all at once reminds us isochronal figures of Antiquity. During his transcendental journeys the shaman visits the Land of Dead and talks with them. To communicate with dead leading a happy life underground is a privilege particular to shamans.
Opening doors of another artistic ritual by casting the net of those quite complex relations into the world of description one takes the road to the universe of thought and comment of primitive man. The aim is to explain the unknown by the known and then to reveal the secrets of the unknown.
In his pictures disclosing figural balls each one hidden within itself, Mehmet Güler’s common legends are “conversation” and “joy of the blue” or “observation”. All these legends conceal talismans aiming to decode whatever covered of secrets and disclose a mysterious conversation. One of the figures plays the role of the shaman and attracts us to the dephts of an invisible world (the underground world ?). Yet it brings us together with ourselves in the dephts of a language reaching the Mistery. Here the simple human withdraws from his position.
Although allusively referring to our congeners lived once upon a time human figures in Güler’s paintings equipped with semantical associations over their fundamental essence make us think of beings opposite to simple human. As the shaman while going to underground world gives the impression of diving into the ocean and then emerging up to the surface, figures in Güler’s paintings shuttle back and forth between the real and the unreal evoking the so-called superhumans.
For the sake of argument, living the “joy of blue” is a simple human sensation but the colour in the painting is not an ordinary blue in the sky or reflected on the sea. Like the shaman diving into the sea with his symbolical cloths Güler’s red and blue figures seem to bear those colours in a symbolical way too. To reach the essence of hidden reality is only possible by feeling the essence of that reality. This concept general in shamanist belief (that actual concept) becomes a necessary perception in Güler’s paintings. He likely tells us that sensible facts can only be comprehendible and without such a condition one cannot perceive the virtual reality.
Like the shaman climbing onto the”cosmic tree” and that his action of reaching the Mystery isolates the tree from its natural properties Güler’s figures in his every painting ascend from earth to sky in a vertical direction. This motility obtained by sketching out the colour touches continuously in a vertical direction reminds us the concept of a cosmic atmosphere. Interlaced with each other in somewhere and climbing to the infinity of the sky, signs evidencing that figures are in a search, cannot be seen, let us say, on their facial tines. Like bodies, faces remain buried into a secret absence consciously slipped off from being existences of the real world. We call them “existences” for they bear the characteristics of hardly visible torsos among colour spots. The artist is not so desirous to transform those figures into anthropomorphic forms from the viewpoint of persons looking at them. Lines applied with a pencil onto the paint stuff here and there can, at the very must, create anthropomorphic allusions.
As it is known, images are formal expressions of objects or beings outside and independent of us. The fact of reality is the basic element determinating objects or beings themselves. But it acquires a new artistic and virtual expression while being transformed into an image. Said expression has not a real dimension in the sense of reality but it becomes its expression in the artistic sense. The shaman could see the soul of the dead human by looking at the mirror and did not need any other pictural ornament. Or the pictural ornament could not reflect the view of the soul appearing in the mirror.
Human figures dimensioning Mehmet Güler’s paintings as main themes remain limited to virtual interpretation likely escaping from our view the physical structure and the universal character or real human being. The human form is not a moulded one characterising those figures. The moulded form is broken, transformed and isolated from its volumetric values but it is not processed in a pure abstract shaping.
Paul Eluard told towards twentees that the only beautiful human law consisted of making light of water and transforming imagination into reality. The relation there between light and water is meaningful on an abstractive logic basis. Water reminds a concrete fluidity acquiring the form tf the recipient where it is poured occupying a place in the vacuum and having a weight. It reflects the light falling onto it. Transforming water into light by imagination means to think of two concepts in connection in the context of identical values.
It remains impossible to realise water (a river or a sea) where light does not pass through or is not reflected in the pictures. The reason that impressionist painters were oriented to riversides was that while following the daylight and transferring visions of light on the water noticed the relation between those two concepts. That was something like transforming imagination into reality. This kind of transition between image and reality could be the result of interpreting image as a plastic reality rather then making an image of the reality.
A similar transformation with its very typical dimensions may reach its most interesting example in Güler’s pictures. Güler too thinks of everything of figural source or able to become an image in this context and transmit them on canvas. That is why Güler’s humans remind archaic corporal forms shaped by a method like manipulating the soft clay material. The fact that they are not completely stuck on the surface is due to a special brush technique originating from the use of the paint. The natural traces of brush strokes are intentionaly vanished or reduced to minimum. To overcome the effect of planarity of widespreadly applied red, blue and orange, grey and white are partly mixed to these colours.
For Güler, it is not the case of using pure colours. An effect of hardly observed modelling is obtained by adding deepening or lightening tones within pure colours. We encounter a brush stroking method similar to, let us say, Cé zanne’s toning system in his still lives. But Cé zanne’s toning system transited in a degraded manner from luminous areas to shady ones aims to show the object within the third dimension. He is more interested in the spherical form of the object than to proclaim what it is.
In Güler’s works specially intensified in ninetees the image of depth not perceivable at first look does not seem to be a primary aim. The effect of paint layers piled up on each other tells us that such an aim does not matter for him. On the other hand, the effect of colours divided by black and grey with its dynamic structuralism in the depth of the picture indirectly points to the instinct of forming the space. Said space is abstract. It does not make any allusion to reality. It does not provide the spectator with any sign as regards to which course tend the human figures in dynamism.
This new research of form gradually and more clearly perceived from eightees to ninetees could be complemented in Güler’s older works with a space particular to anatolian nature. By the time, this space isolated from the characteristics and human reality once referring to the neighborhood tend to a more universal human and spatial reality.
With regard to his paintings of that period, F. Günter Zehnder stressed that Güler’s art was defined by a double observation. While the first one was the imperceptible observation of the eyes conscious of reality remembering everything important or not, the second one was the observation of a full consciousness which perceives life with its sentimental appearances and looks for original imaginal forms.
In one respect, such a double observation valid for every artist, for Güler followed a track towards the second one fundamentally due to a consciousness giving way to a wider search of style. He left the synthetiser character in the kind of expression originating from the research of identity between the natural and the imaginary sides of the image in the form of phantasmagoria in his early pictures, pushing back the aim of reflecting an objectual image of the form and the expression became the form itself. Yet, the paint was not an element descripting the form under its command. It was the primary factor in forming the style. After such a stage Güler played with the paint following a path to find out its soft shaping dose. Concept of “enthusiasm “in his paintings of related period defines his concern in this sense.
This is a free or spontaneous working method. It does not pay any importance to concerns as regards likening and any nonpictural control.
The fact that his recent paintings are interpreted according to a vertical composition is as ( and even more) important as the paint itself. This composition is partly cut by a diagonal flow. The flowing down of colour bands like a cascade arranges the rhythmic movement of the eye accordingly. What is flowing in Güler’s pictures following the direction of the said movement is the block-colour. Slightly being sedimented and sticking on the surface of the canvas simultaneously and thus reminding a pictural relievo with opposite influences yet erasing that image of picture are facts already experienced by painters like Messagıer, Gorky, Pautrıer, Hartung. Güler’s pictures measured with those essays and associating very distantly dependent relations as the continuation until now of his artistic activity is the natural result of a self-shaping process.
II
In Hegel’s Aesthetics from a logical and dialectal point of view the Absolute appears as objects of sensation. That also means sensational appearance of the Idea (Schein). The illumination of the Absolute under tulles of sensation, in other words the Ideal. The forms or the moods of consciousness are different (2). They differ from artist to artist, from work to work. When it is the direct creation of soul the concept of beauty in art is more superior than the one in nature. Again for Hegel, a perfect work of art represents the spiritual content in a complete harmony with sensuality (3).
We cited above the spiritual structuralism in Güler’s pictures. In mostly female figures the sensuality as being the obligatory result of the content does not bear any exaggeration and is merely closed to elements reminding sexuality. As we told before, figure for Güler does not disclose itself as a source of corporal pleasure. Nevertheless he does not neglect to stress elements shaping the female figure.
In this contexte Mehmet Güler seems to be satisfied of an abstractive expressionism. Such a satisfaction is a must for his picture. Being not linear but coloristic and spotty obliges us to perceive his figures as coloristic and spotty formations. In fact spiritualism and sensuality are concepts which cannot be superposed. In cases spiritualism includes sensuality under its pressure, sensuality as a matter of course remains indistinct and imperceptible.
Güler’s humans through the hot and cold waves of colours and nebulous colour bands are born limited by details remembering their own existence but they accept as a natural law the happiness of being wrapped by those colour bands. They continue to live clamped together. They do not take care of any difference. They are nourished of solidarity of living together. They are like members of an Abelian race. As if in one of Baudelaire’s poem God smiles to them with contentement. Nevertheless they are not aware of this optimistic look.
They find the reliance of their existence in their solidarity. In gravures of seventees and following paintings, position of humankind was not any different. Humans in his new pictures are seen in a harmonised clearness with their realities like anatolian humans confident and trusting who were pushed to be full of their own existence. Shades deepen as human groups intensify but this deepening is necessary for the contents of human spiritual thought and is in the same time a condition of existing. In other words Güler’s humans deepening shades around themselves preserve their belief that they would strengthen communication vis-a-vis real humans.
III
Having accomplished his fine arts education Mehmet Güler won the European exam and went to Kassel for his speciality training. He lives there since 1977. It is beyond question, Kassel is famous with Documenta exhibitions held every five years. Artists coming to Kassel from all over the world to find themselves a way in the art market make this region one of the most known art center.
In such an entourage, observing surrounding formations, going on working closely pursuing artistic developments is a plus for Güler. During the education period and the following years as a graphic artist he attempted, more than paintings, wood engravings, gravures and partly works based on regional themes gathered in his subconscious by his native land. It was not a surprise that those works were greeted with interest in circles which were keen to develop new attachments towards artistic tendences as alternatives to European egocentric culture. But related attachments were partly treated as a necessary tendence as a duty and right for artists of third world countries, outside Europe’s own diaspora. Having witnessed the Renaissance, the Illumination Era, the conflicting phases of Modernism in Europe, all the currents apparently came to an end with post-modernist process. Eropean countries treated them all as the natural derivatives of their Greco-Latin based own culture and suggested cultures outside their frontiers to return to their origin. This conduct hardly changed despite globalisation. As regards universal values such a conduct would cause contradictions for works of art as the common goods of humankind. Whatever the cultural source he comes from it is more than natural for an artist to search his place within a world of universal character. Unless said research is isolated from human existence, break the ties with his circle, disregards the fact of personality and identity, is unaware of his personal vision of world and the position that he represents while choosing his proper place.
Indeed Güler’s neighborhood landscapes, pictures having for subject Anatolian human life, his gravures in seventees were not works done under a demand. Such a demand came from the artist himself and took its place in his artistic life as a periodic activity. That is why works of that period which we would define as an interpretative form of Anatolian life and human reality reflects the social tendences and the level of problematic. Artist’s responsability at that period equalising artist’s witnessing was a natural and necessary tendence as regards realities faced at that period. The artist could not imprison himself in an ivory tower (tour d’ivoire) against events taking place in Turkey.
It is mostly probable that pictures of related period are appreciated abroad and mainly in Germany as expressionist statement of a social fact. Nevertheless Mehmet Güler did not mould his picture at that point within technical and aesthetic context While preserving his engraving technique under a limited production level concentrating himself mainly on paintings serials on the other side he greatly changed his mentality of neighborhood figures. He enlarged the share of the paint to supplement the plasticity. He considered the oil paint as an essential material in larger contexte. While feeling himself quite free for engraving linearity he endlessly liberated the function of the paint in forming compositions of bigger dimensions.
Such an understanding meant placing the oil paint ahead as a traditional material. Otherwise said, that mentality would have struggled in a milieu where canvas paintings were qualified as outdated to demonstrate the contradiction of said argumants. It goes without saying that there are some transitions between the material or technology used in art and the form of expression. The aimed slippery influence is only possible with painting by obtaining paint crushing and flattening it on the surface of the picture. Besides, gravure is the product of textural effect created on paper with the image printed by a printing machine. Painting texture has its pictorial structure made by brush or other media on canvas or harder surface whereas gravure is a mechanical branch enabling image to immerge into soft engraving paper even by multiple printings which naturally gives way to different pictoral results.
Conscious of that, Güler pursues in his paintings methods differing from ones in gravure. Yet, application of linear details to flattened paint texture in some proportions originates from the concern of establishing relations between such works and gravures. On the other hand those relations are not solely limited to related details but represent themselves in the figural contexte. In figures that we may qualify as the derivatives of a “trompe l’oeil aesthetic” the artist keeps enlarged the significative base of the perception. To cite an example, he is contented of allusional signs concerning the sexual structure of woman figure but does not enter into details. Signs that we may interprete as defining indicators ( the breast, the hip and leg curles ) evidence the treatment of the female image as a main motive. As we know nudes represent one of the illimited themes of art since very old times.
Incarnated by the Antiquity and considered by the Renaissance as an inseparable passion this theme has intensely entered into Güler’s pictures, specially with his recent works. They are not unrestrained figures those nudes. Moreover, the artist’s will is not absolutely the nudism. Figures represented by groups rather than being shown one by one make us remember the concern of producing a mass effect. In Güler’s pictures a nudism in relation with space and at a conceptual level dominates. The dynamic effect related to figures includes a plastic interpretation made of paint and the massive position of those figures in space are related with an abstract vision yet produced by paint.
IV
By what we hitherto told we focused on the basic structure identifying Güler’s recent works from an aesthetic and technical point of view and we tried to detail the main motives forming that structure. Based on the fact that each work of art is the product of the structuring instinct chosen or preferred by its artist, we can say artistic model of transformation present in Güler’s works performs in contemporary qualifications but within the frame of the artist’s personal researches. Indeed this model depends on occidental artistic formation but reducing this dependence factor for the sake of his identity obliges us to look at his pictures from a different viewpoint.
Every career stages left behind on artistic plane is being considered according to results obtained by the artist. This is due to the reality that created results depend on consecutive accumulation of knowledge and experience. Accumulation of knowledge and experience may be plural or developped in a single direction. Looking from this point one can see that Güler preferred the second path, that is to say be opted for organising the mutational properties in a common sense and under common denominators. So, the structural sense of his picture is formed on a unified surface and no deviation has been faced contradicting that structuralism. The truth that this position is shared by many of our painters evidences the factor of the conservation of identity under a generational movement. Today, Güler has his place among the artists of the middle-generation. Factual influences forming his pictures include interpretative properties in harmony with this generation’s methods and are in close relation with his experience and knowledge being privileges of living abroad.
These interpretative properties made him by the time place the figure with more decision in the center of his picture. In his recent paintings the relation of Absolute Human and Abstract Space gets ahead while in his early pictures human theme in nature occupies the main place. Absolute Human and Abstract Space clearly shows that there is not any other aim beyond the universal relation of these two concepts. Yet human is the universal human and nature is the place unified with the human on a fundamental plane. Furthermore, as another reality this fundamental relation indirectly makes allusions to problems faced by today’s human like feeling extrinsic, social isolation, non-solidarity etc.. Resistance and decision symbolyzes today’s human, encourages him against the negative, strengthen his belief on the future. We can say the same for humans forming Güler’s pictures. Human’s constructive and directing power is the main function circling his pictures as symbol-messages.
Prof. Dr. Kaya Özsezgin
2000
(1) Mircea Eliade, “Shamanism”,
(2) HEGEL, Copleston History of Philosophy
(3) A. G. E.