We invite you to Aslıhan Kaplan Bayrak’s solo exhibition, which draws inspiration from the “Star-Island” duality in E. A. Poe’s poetry, and to explore together the meaning in her recent paintings, watercolors, and video works at the opening on Thursday, September 26th at Labirent Sanat.
Realizing an independent, isolated existence in the universe is impossible, the island becomes a second root, a source to create a new reality. When we change our perspective, the island offers an intellectual viewpoint that can help us better understand the interconnectedness of everything. Put simply, if sea levels were significantly lower, many islands would be connected to continents.
What makes the island the focus of this text and exhibition is its topological and conceptual richness. To contemplate an island is also to consider how it makes us feel. The island, with its physical structure, is also related to the dualities created by finitude and immensity; the feeling of light created by the moon shining on the sea on a calm night. When Novalis said that the seat of the soul is the place where the outer and inner worlds meet, he must have experienced such a moment when the inner and outer fold together and intertwine.
The initial determination of the reality of a true existence lies in its being in a place. Spatial continuity is the locus where all potential things have complex relations. The island is also a natural matrix where all events take place with the vital movement of its unique fauna and flora behind its deserted and static appearance.
The island, where relationality is vividly observed in all forms of existence, the transition of nature is felt in a layered manner, the harmony born from the union of land and water surrounds the atmosphere with changing frequencies, with its suspended temporality and fragility, simultaneous pressure of the fluctuations of vitality on our senses, brings us closer to our own bodies; with the air we breathe into our lungs, the breeze brushing against our skin as it passes, the whisper in our ear, with the sense of multiplicity that sensation splits the inside and the outside, it also purifies us from all empty judgments, opinions, and beliefs and draws us into the nature we belong to.
In Aslıhan’s art practice, which has spanned nearly twenty years, her recent paintings diverge from the layered canvas surfaces dominated by horizontal-vertical spatial architectural elements, generally perceived as mathematical and constructed; instead, a sense of fluidity and transparency prevails over rigid, solidified artistic forms. Aslıhan carries her creative process, which she continues without being bound to a certain material, technique and form, towards innovation without falling into repetition, the intellectual processes that form the background of her works are also transformed.
In the exhibition “Star-Island”, Aslıhan utilizes the possibilities of painting to explore the sensory and physical phenomenon between the ground and the sky. When we look at the sky covering the island, the trillions of kilometers between the stars we see and us who watch them with admiration disrupt our perception of space-time, we can understand that our Earth is astronomically close to zero level. Such an encounter or awareness challenges the illusion of ownership we fall into during our quest to understand life/the universe, and also becomes the ground for us to confront the shadow/dark aspects of our existence.
When I saw Aslıhan’s watercolor paintings, many of which I know she made while in nature, as well as those she painted in her studio, with her inner imagination of nature and the island, and her video installation titled Bird-Fish, which we brought together under the title “Yıldız Ada”, I felt that she was turning to a simple, poetic narrative language, purified of excesses, as she described it.
You can see Aslıhan Kaplan Bayrak’s solo exhibition titled “Star-Island” at Labirent Sanat between 26 September – 2 November 2024.