Entre-Deux, between Paris and Istanbul

The exhibition, “Entre-Deux, Paris-Istanbul,” currently at the Cité International des Arts Paris, raises the question of how artists inhabit two cultures at the same time and explores the artistic impact on Turkish artists who live “entre-deux.”

Living and creating in one country but being firmly rooted in another gives rise to the sense that, as a result, one is of a third and undefined place. Entre-Deux is an exploration of this undefined space where Turkish artists who live in France and zigzag between lives in Istanbul and Paris. One foot on the banks of the river Seine, which runs through Paris, and one foot on the shores of the Bosphorus along Istanbul. This notion of fluidity evokes the concept of artistic and cultural frontiers that are liquid, always flowing and ebbing, and blending and transforming. It is a process that is never rigid but always yielding—an endless source as one drinks from both sides of the shores for inspiration and nourishment.

One enters the first gallery at the Cité des Arts Paris and is faced with walls of huge portraits of the Turkish artists whose works are exhibited in Entre-Deux. Photographed in black and white by photographer Argun Yasa, portraits are used as a patchwork of images that adorn the invitations, posters and books for the exhibit and give the public a direct face-to-face encounter with each artist.

Within the framework of the “Turkey Season in France,” which began July 1, 2009 and ends March 31, Entre-Deux is the largest collective exhibition of contemporary Turkish artists in Paris sponsored during the period with over 100 works of photography, sculpture, paintings, etchings and video. Produced by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, or İKSV, and the Paris-based SIMIT, which was founded in Paris in 2007 to promote Turkish art, music, film and photography beyond the borders of Turkey, the exhibition is co-curated by noted French journalist, curator and editor of the French art journal, “Artension,” Francoise Monnin, and the President of SIMIT, Banu Dicle.

For “Entre-Deux,” Monnin and Dicle combined their creative perspectives and chose a cross section of Turkish artists who regularly exhibit in Istanbul and in Paris, as well as Lausanne, New York, Seoul, Berlin and Madrid, yet are firmly planted in France. Their goal was to reach new audiences who were unacquainted with the scope and dynamism of the Turkish art scene in Paris.

Artistic tradition

Among artists represented in Entre Deux, three of the artists, Utku Varlık, Nevhiz Tanyeli, and Ömer Kalesi, are found in the collections of the Musee d’Art Moderne d’Istanbul. These three artists, as well as the younger generations who followed them, formed waves of artists who followed the traces of the earlier generations of Turkish artists such as Abidin Dino, Selim Turan, Hakkı Anlı, Fikrat Mualla Saygı and Bedri Rahmi Eyuboğlu.

From the Ottoman period at the end of the 19th century when Turkey sent military painters to Paris to study the beaux arts through to 20th century when impressionism, abstraction, fantasy and hyper-realism replaced classical traditions and themes, Turkish artists in France have found unique artistic voices and have forged styles virtually unknown in Turkey. Ody Saban, expresses herself through Art Brut or Outsider Art, a form of art generated by personal living experiences, usually out of the ordinary, which is rarely seen in Turkey.

Varlik embraces the fantasy world of French symbolist painter Gustave Moreau as his photo realistic details evoke esoteric dream states filled with metaphorical relics of his memory and sentiments. Nevhiz’ delicate pastel palette offers a window into a world of motion carrying one into a whirlwind of images that appear at odd angles, unexpected in their location and appearance. No sense of direction or whether these figures are standing or floating, they simple appear on the canvas rather randomly. Nevhiz clearly draws from her divided life, in which she spends equal parts in Paris and Istanbul and reminds us she lives without limits or frontiers.

Erdal Alantar’s broad strokes sweep across the canvas to create a hybrid of colorful calligraphy with the fluidity of music. Painter and sculptor Ismail Yıldırım’s work leaves no smooth edges either in wood or on canvas. Rough and powerful lines give life to figures, which often represent him, as he explores the harsh themes of man’s alienation and forced departures.

Sculptor Salih Coşkun shows man’s struggle to emerge from his primitive and instinctual self, a Herculean effort towards completion. Kalesi, who has been nourished from his early life in Macedonia, pays homage to the village of his birth and the dervishes, imams, sheep herders and farmers who flowed through the life of his youth. Even after more than 40 years in Paris, these powerful images remain a fixed part of his artistic repertoire.

New Wave

The last wave of young Turkish artists shipwrecked in Paris followed different dreams, dreams of the need to travel and embrace things foreign and exotic. The synergy of this vacillation “entre deux” countries, serves to inspire and energize their art. Working between enhanced realism based on photography and POP-ular culture, Gökçe Çelikel paints herself as an over-examined figure as she mocks prevalent social values in a media exploited world.

Ali Umut Ergin works in video and installation, and filmed the endless motion of the Paris underground to present a montage of great beauty and poetry. He transformed the banal and quotidian into a captivating waltz between motion and music. Trained as a cinematographer, Ergin considers video a form of writing, with endless technical and aesthetic versatility to create poetic narratives. Ruveyda Koyuncu Colombin’s graphic works merge the exotic and the erotic in a variety of mediums on paper. For Colombin, the voyage never ends, and she sets her surreal figures against backdrops of unknown places.

These young Turkish artists share with the earlier waves of artists the notion that they never envisioned to definitively abandon their native country. They live, caught between Paris and Istanbul, like an unfaithful lover whose heart is honestly divided.

The exhibition is open until Feb. 21.