İrfan Önürmen’s Solo Exhibition
06/10/2017 - 21/12/2017
Aria art gallery in collaboration with C24 Gallery New York presents İrfan Önürmen’s first solo exhibition ‘’Gaze’’ in London, between the dates 6 October – 21 December 2017.
İrfan Önürmen (1958) has developed an unique new technique using tulle since the end of 1990’s. As a result of searching space and volume, Önürmen developed a new technique which he calls ‘’Pentulles’’ referencing to the history of painting and sculpture arts. With Pentulles, he creates his figures and compositions by cropping and layering tulles on to of each other.
İrfan Önürmen’s Gaze Series’ large sized portraits give way to psychological and political readings, relate to the anonymous yet familiar characters and feelings to reference to our external and internal worlds. The artist’s layered and slightly blurry tulles, geometrically cut forms, joyful brightness and cheerful outlook urges the viewer to think deeper. Önürmen’s practice turns the common form upside down and offers a unique point of view with an original language and context. The artist in his own vision, offers the truth and the fantasy, the visible and the beyond, the blurry and the clear.
Önürmen’s portraits reference to pixelated images which we are exposed to in our daily lives on our digital devices such as our mobile phones and computers. These layers which disrupt the formal boundaries also draw our attention to the chaotic situation and state of mind of our society that we live in. Önürmen collects his images from the social media which millions of images are shared every day. Then he transforms these images to anonymous portraits that are familiar to our collective mind. Through this Önürmen takes a X-ray of the society driving the viewer to look deeper into it.
The artist’s precedence is to achieve a strong bond with the viewer through the hidden emotions and expressions behind these figures, rather than conveying the stories behind these figures. Through the artist’s masterly handled expressions, the viewer is drawn into these images and get confronted with a deeper context. With tulles and brush strokes performed carefully with layers on top of each other, the artist amplifies the unnoticed deepness of his subjects.
