Toccatae & Fuguae
right: Motel by the River, 2014, oil on canvas, 100 × 130 cm
The painting cycle initiated at the defense of my doctoral dissertation in painting unfolds as a visual depiction of the dream phenomenology. The starting point was simple yet radical: only those fragments of motifs that the artist could clearly recall were rendered in oil, while the remainder of the composition was left as untouched, blank canvas — a fugue, a silence, a subtle absence.
This whiteness is not a lack, but an active space within the painting. It marks the boundary of memory, the point of rupture between the conscious and the unconscious, while also holding the potential for completion in the eye of the viewer.
The process can be compared to archaeological restoration: just as archaeologists reconstruct an entire vessel from roughly thirty percent of its remains, supplementing it with neutral plaster, here too the fragment carries the memory of the whole. Emptiness becomes a constructive element — a testimony to what eludes us, and a reminder that wholeness resides not in total depiction, but in the tension between presence and absence.
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Fragmented Clouds, oil on canvas; 2019., 2020., 60x80 cm
R 1, R 2, R 3
acryl and oil on canvas, 2019
In these works, the fugue signifies the loss of the original context, while the empty space is deliberately offered to the viewer as a field of free interpretation. The rugby game disappears because the ball is concealed by the fugue; with the removal of this key element, the situation itself loses its clear definition. The players' strength, tension, and strategic movement thus acquire a new, open framework of meaning.
Rescue operations, street fights, fan riots, contemporary dance — these are just some of the associations voiced by viewers, confirming that the meaning of the image is not fixed within the motif, but emerges in the encounter with the observer.
The scene is set in ancient Troy (near Çanakkale, Turkey), a site the artist visited in 2018.
