11 Mar - 10 Apr 2020
Mehmet Guleryuz has been at the forefront of Turkish Contemporary art as a multi faceted artist since the early 1960's. He has left his indelible mark not only as an artist but just as importantly as a teacher, as an activist and an art professional. It has been nearly 70 years since a young Mehmet Guleryuz was a student at the Saint Benoit Lycee, where in his own words he began his first serious painting attempt in the Lycee's publication "Premier Elan". This artistic journey which could be said to begin with a submission to the publication of the Lycee comes full circle with a carefully selected body of work allowing the viewer to trace the span of this ongoing journey.
Drawing comprises the core of Güleryüz's artistic practice; "His fundamental beliefs that the artist should address in their works the essential problems of their times, and that in doing so, it is necessary but not sufficient that they have natural artistic capacity, expert technical training and a broad knowledge of art history. In addition, the artist must have a philosophy and an opinion formulated out of a well developed and a very broadly based practice of observing and thinking to follow and analyze events and to criticize." It is inherent in his process and necessary to it that the image is forged on the spot and in one continuous flow of thinking, feeling and physical making.
It is nowhere clearer than in his drawings that the ongoing activity of physical making and specifically the creation and manipulation of the scenarios of the continual drama of his inner world serve for Güleryüz a necessary life function. It is by means of his art that he processes both the outer world of his experience and the inner world of his emotional responses to it.
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