LOLA

THE MOVE AT THE BORDER
                                              Gülseli İnal

The postmodern attitude carries to the agenda the situation of the blurring constitutions, the separations without leaving the external world, the intellectual break-ups, not the universal values but the happenings and the phenomena, “that moment” which is left behind after a tale is told or the environment that the things belong to or the status of the temporary idea which cannot be reversed. The creation of the new focuses in consciousness by the environmental phenomena, the deletion of the memories that belong to other people and the increasing importance of the building structures of the individual instead, summarizes the new situation that is reached after the industrial societies. This state which seems abnormal is actually the result of en experimental separation coming to the front in every area. In art expression, this tendency generates the starting of the neo-aesthetics where the experimental ventures come into being. Since now, the transition to the post-industrialist societies took place and the poverty that the industrial age created, the hopelessness, the dispersion of the powers, the environmental conditions of the intense mechanic production, got involved also the damages of the past along the call of a future in the individual’s mind. The post-industrial societies, as a result, multiplied the innumerable Kitsch examples in the life of the individual by advancing the tasteless monuments and created conditions which have lost their color and liveliness, destroyed the individual’s fundamental vital bases like romanticism, love and passion with a light apocalypse.
The duty of the artist in this apocalypse is to recreate these fundamental bases and to return to the internal datum, just like the method that İlke Kutlay applies in his painting. Although the aesthetical marks of the Artist are perceived as external space-internal space, he tries to construct the aesthetics of the random, chaotic, successively built up subject and object. For the Artist who initiates the action of move as he perceived, felt and accepted, the tasteless things and the wreck piles of the post industrialism are also carried on to the canvas because they belong to us and they are transformed forward by being conceptualized on the canvas. On his canvases, the frozen state of the action which recognizes no borders exists, which had the tendency to spill over from the canvas in between the appearing phenomena from the area of the neo-aesthetics. Secondly, it is the hanging actions of the figures at a certain time interval. Thirdly, on the canvas, it is the devastation that exists, which has a lot to do with the conception of the conceptual art language, which emerged from the time extension of the external  world but which is doomed to perish at the present, which is lived alongside a magical intensification. As a method, İlke Kutlay paints whatever he feels like. While he presents us a section of the world which is dying out, he is as cold-blooded and as realist as to say “This is the world that I am face to face, this is how I found your piece of art.” To give an example, in one of his paintings, the figure of a young girl in the space of an internal location surrounded by ruined walls, who does not know where to turn the wheel of the bicycle, indicates the societal structure which had no exits. There is no where that the young girl can go. All the roads wait in the symmetry of the loneliness which is surrounded by the ruined walls. Again, on another canvas, what does the teenage girl, who lies on the old sofa of a traditional house, see in the future that she is staring at? Most probably, the teenage girl does not see anyone else other than the Artist who is drawing her figure and she is waiting, locked up with her action. A weird outworn feeling, the gloom of a world that is about to end and the scarcity of the representations… A light wind blows over the paintings, a wind that can suddenly destroy the aesthetic object which can decolorize the colors that are able to create a spontaneous change. This is an invitation to the feast of the lost with the compromising of the concepts and the change of the time. The feeling of loss is hidden in the language of the pastel colors that the Artist uses on his canvas, the postures of the figures, the tastelessness and the cheapness of the broken furniture. Along with the feeling of not belonging the environment that one belongs to, the process of combing out the societal codes surrounding one-self, the adoption of the nature in which one breaths and finally the emphasizing of the points that are being reached while one tries to discover himself, are the elements forming the tetragon of the pyramid of the Artist. At the vertex of the four different triangles that rise up from the corners of this tetragon, the universe that the artist would like to reach makes its existence felt as a sign. “The ‘me’ one wants to be, the ‘me’ one is going to be and the ‘me’ that he currently is”, they all flash like a jade stone at the summit at which the triangles meet. Because the painting adventure of İlke Kutlay is an adventure of “being oneself”. Every move that he reaches on the canvas is his own self. While his painting expression is born as being his own self, the Artist is looking for the crystal of the four-dimension time, in which each dimension seems like separated from each other on the four different triangle surfaces of the four-angled base, and wants to carry it to his painting expression.  
While in reality the three time-dimensions that the Artist lives, “the past”, “the future” and “the present time” tell us about his personal timing, the rules of the “Cosmic Present”, which is beyond these, is different. With the years 2000, the “Cosmic Presence” advances by changing numerous phenomena. The new time processes which were turned upside down, demolished, broke into pieces while changing and in which the frequencies have completely changed, have left behind debris. The giant hurricane destroyed whatever came on its way, destroyed and perished. At this point, such a moment is reached that not only via what is left but also via what is not left, however still by carrying the marks of the hurricane. Hence İlke Kutlay tries to tell us about a new extension on the canvas. In the company of the pastel colors that he uses, he aims to give the whole composition inside the developed concepts of extensions. This is the extension that time changed. The extensional dimension which creates a sense of devastation with the novelties it conveys… As if the forces of the darkness and light which have been battling for a long time in life have come to a resolution now and the life started a transition towards a different point. The trauma is over, the spasms are gone and what is left behind is a devastated world. The pain and melancholy which were left behind; the intensity existing at the moment and the doubt towards the future, all have come together in one pot and appeared in front of the Artist. The canvas is completed by the transformation of the sui generis mental experiences into forms, the sui generis decisions into a composition and the sui generis senses into a colored expression. One of the most important elements is the femininity being on the agenda of every canvas. As if the Artist has realized that the universe has evolved from the masculine dimension to the feminine dimension, he completes the birth of the canvas by placing in every composition an aesthetical element in the form of woman. In his personal pyramid all his figures that are at the peak point and representing the feminine power are in a relation to the Artist and they focused their stares at the Artist who created them. They are always eye-to-eye; following their thoughts floating in the void, they will be staring at their creator in their cognizance. Each and every one of them is loaded with their mission as a messenger sign, in a certain posture kind of stranger, kind of new, kind of wild; they have all come from far away.
In aesthetics, the registration of the postmodern tendencies, a situation which has been conceptualized by the Artist, an image of the past, to the future, is closely related to the political tendencies of the era rather than the temporary images of the creative mind. Maybe a mental or sentimental leap or transition is lived and that may very often mean a total rejection of everything. On the other hand, while we do not come across any social or political messages in İlke Kutlay paintings when the piece is interpreted as a whole, the integrant interpretation of the post-modern always focuses on the conflicting cultural standings, the class differences, the debris of the capitals, the devastated souls and the mechanized individual. At this point, his revolt without a political discourse or criticism, his indication of something enables the Artist, whu has faced a world which he was not expecting at all, to give the most confidential messages. If the İlke Kutlay canvas could be irradiated, at the lowest level one would find the disappointment surface that the world has created on him. This is definitely an unacceptable phenomenon for him. However, the negativity which is turned into positivity reveals his power of transformation; the demolition which is carried to the aesthetic language facilitates our approval of his ability to reconstruct. At the point where every kind of thought and utopia ended, he conveys himself on to the canvas as if he is cloning himself, coloring his senses, forms his thoughts and calls back the extensional dimension. This is not the acceptance and creation of life as it is as its edges are burnt, its essence is demolished. Here we run into neither joy nor happiness or enthusiasm. A phoenix which is going to be born from the ashes of a faded world is being waited. In this dream we run into the aesthetic object which is focused on the flower piles, mirrors, asymmetric places and the world of the feminine    which never leaves him alone in this dream. The hallows caved by the erotic energy, on which the feminine power is focused, rise up to the surface indistinctly and at the moment they rise, they fade. The reason for their fading is the discontinuity of the metropolitan life, speed and ambiguity. The life which is dreamt of when it is being carried to another extension in the artist’s depictions, while the human at the peripheries of the mega-cities conflict with the life at the edge.  The tendency of making an extension which makes a new start in İlke Kutlay’s dreams means the opening of the doors of a new area. Although he says “I accept everything as they are, I do not criticize”, the action of expressing the concepts on canvas and to meet the new was of thinking with the classical materials, indicates a boiling volcano. To step inside from this slightly open door, to go over the order of the figure, getting into harmony with the external word, more or less, erotism… The artist is obviously criticizing the era in these paintings in which we find a series of macro-political tendencies. However, by claiming the classical materials of the art of painting, with respect to his masters, with the condition of being a link in the chain of the painting expression in this devastating era… The painting expression which he describes as the only place that he comes from and the extensions of his roots is also his personality. This is the unexpected state of the old and new energies which work simultaneously. To hold the mirror to the one at the tip of the edge, to elaborate, maybe to be able to reflect even further with the paintings in which he created the future times. The painting of not only the dreams but also the external truth’s with a hypothetical, dreamy armor is not something that can be taken as unimportant. İlke Kutlay is aware that all the resources are at the present tense. Working like an aesthetics registrar without the concern of conveying a message, without sheltering any dream of the future, is a mission that the Artist has also realized. Not getting detached while making detachment as aesthetic may be a motto of the neo-aesthetics in the new state of consciousness in the new times. However in this language of canvas, the essence of expectations which are constructed over devastation makes us reach to formal politics. The original aesthetic approach which changes place with the romantic sense and perceptions, also took over the criticism of discontinuities, detachments, differences and the unfounded meaning networks.  The passionate advancing expressions on the canvas, the compositions which create nice feelings, the adorable figure settlement, the space dominated by the beauty is now left behind. The aesthetical commentary attitude of the old world left its place to the dilemmas in the object of thought, to the uncompromising distances, to the feelings of going far away. The phenomenal pyramid of the current for which neither a single thought or a single dimension of perception is enough, is left at an abandoned area, in its solitude. The place where all the approaches and commentaries come to an end… The fact that the canvas comes to the state of an aesthetic object which is signatory is because it is a replica of the images that get detached and come forward in a painful life, of the dehumanized world and of the de-naturalized society. At the place where even the memories are deleted, there exists the mournful nostalgia of the longing to the lost object. The lost object is now all about a world which cannot be depicted, a life whose content that we never know. Here, the artist recreates on the canvas the lives of the majority of the society which lives in kitsch. He gives back to them their lives by turning their dreams, which are bombed by highly explosive bombs, into pictorial compositions, colors and shapes and with the aim to pass the whole society to the unoccupied zone.