TIRANA, Sept. 15 – One of Turkey’s best painters, Tulin Onat, has opened her first exhibition in Tirana, in a display that also inaugurates the new season at the National Art Gallery following the summer break.
Speaking at the launch of her exhibition this week, the Turkish artist said she was happy to be displaying her works and visiting the country for the first time.
“Before I opened this exhibition I was curious about your country and when I came here I was surprised. My principle is if people cannot come to see your works, you have to go there. And when I did this I felt so happy about the way they received them. My coming here has made me happy,” said the artist.
Beste Gursu, the exhibition’s curator, says “Onat is known for her abstract forms, the depth of her works’ messages and the colour effect. Everything she does is reinforced by her three-dimensional works.”
Born in Isnabul, Onat, 70, has opened about 37 personal exhibitions and participated in more than 200 collective shows in Turkey and abroad. Her works are displayed at a series of private museums and collections.
Speaking at the exhibition’s opening ceremony, Turkey’s ambassador to Albania, Hidayet Bayraktar, described Onat as one of the most original artists of Turkish painting.
“I feel honoured that we have the well-known artist Onat with her contemporary paintings among Albanian art lovers. Onat, one of the most original creators of Turkish painting, with her abstract works and symbols expressing feelings from her lifestyle transmits various dimensions to art lovers,” said the ambassador as quoted by Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency in the local Albanian service.
Tulin Onat’s “Loop” exhibition in Tirana featuring some of the best works created in recent years, made possible by the Turkish embassy and the Junus Emre cultural center, will remain open until October 2.
Tà¼lin Onat
The Turkish artist graduated at Istanbul State Fine Arts Academy from the Advanced Painting Department. She made reproduction by studying and examining many European museums. Major reproductions were ‘The Turkish Bath’ by Ingres and ‘Carvey’ Andrea Mantegna, which she made both in Louvre Museum in 1970 and 1971. During the year 1973 she was given a scholarship by the Austrian government to study at the ‘Salzburg Internationale Sommer Academie fà¼r Bildende Kunst’.
In 1983 Onat received a “proficiency in art” degree from Marmara University where she was an academician. She became an associate in 1990 and professor in 2000.
In 1987, she established with Hasan Yelmen Derimod Culture Centre and realized retrospective exhibitions and she was the first in Turkey to publish art books and organize retrospective exhibitions. The artist has delivered figurative works in the 70’s. The social incidents and changes the country has experienced in this era have been reflected in her paintings with the emphasis on the expression. Her thematic paintings in the early 80’s on ‘The Women’ have heralded her figurative works to follow shortly. The canvasses of unconventional forms used for the first time, the repetition of abstract forms and the rhythm emerged from repetition.
The change in her paintings of this era has gained ever-increasing speed while the problematic of location equally reveals simplification and attempts of purification from nostalgia. Her painting titled ‘The Galaxy’ from 1988 that covered the floor of a corner of the Derimod Cultural Centre became the centre of attention and proved for the first time that the canvasses are not necessarily bound for walls. The thick canvasses she later exhibited both on the floor and the wall (‘Canvasses of the object- Big Exhibition – 1990) made a current issue of the fact that the paintings could be considered in line with the location of the exhibition.
‘The wall is not merely a space for displaying art, but is integral part of it’ claims Tà¼lin Onat and underlines this approach in all of her exhibitions.
She has participated in many different group exhibitions in Turkey and abroad, with her works being part of large private collections and museums. The paintings emphasize depth and create with elaborated choice of color a three-dimensional sensation to the point that one is tented to touch the painting – which has been taken to the extreme with the latest ‘nail’ paintings. Taking this concept a logical step further she has worked on the canvas by cutting and drilling wholes, thus turning the illusion of the three dimensionality into reality.
