"Lotus"
PILEVNELI Dolapdere
June 6 - July 21, 2018
PILEVNELI Gallery is preparing to host Evren Tekinoktay`s solo exhibition titled “Lotus” from June 6th to July 21st, 2018.
“Lotus” is the symbol of the heart and re-appears several times in the neon reliefs in the show. With a general consensus among ancient texts in eastern cultures, Lotus symbolizes spiritual enlightenment and rebirth. With “Lotus” Evren Tekinoktay will display 5 neon reliefs in a painted space to create an embraced room of light, forms, colors and visual rebuses.
Collage is an area which Tekinoktay has extensively worked in since the beginning of her career, and the neon works can be seen as a continuation of her previous painterly collage works. Although the neon reliefs are in an entirely different form, consisting of painted machines with neon veins and swirling electrical tracks, each one still comes from the notion of the base of collage. These works also continue the subject of the moving collage from her previous collage films, now in the form of visual rebuses as little machines which work diligently and monotonously, combining painting with neon lights. The neon reliefs play with the idea that a work is either on or off and these works are based on figuration as an abstraction, and vice versa.
Tekinoktay, who was born elsewhere than her parents’ home country, defines her work as: “Growing up with almost opposing cultural codes, languages and symbols, what is sieved is my practice. Maybe somehow the rebuses in these works can be seen as illiterate pronunciations or a sound between existing languages”.