Art - A Bridge Towards Peace and Love

Turkish artist Setenay Özbek’s words are the best confirmation that the International Art Studio“Radovan Trnavac Mica” is an integral part of the optimistic vision of multiculturalism, which clears the way towards the unification various ethnic and cultural groups through accepting and respecting different cultural models. For Setenay, art is “a contribution to peace and core values.” She says that “art is a capable of establishing and maintaining relations between different cultures and help the preservations of peace and love in the world.” It is, therefore,quite obvious why one of her paintings has been entitled love.

Setenay Özbek is a multi-talented artist whose interests range from painting on one side, all the way over to literature and cinematography on the other. Ofcourse, painting has always been her main interest and most important tool of communication.
This exhibition in The International Art Studio in Veljevo is yet another way of attracting modern art world’s attention, since this is the first visit of an internationally renowned Turkish artist. Three years ago, Setenay exhibited at the Royal Academie of Arts’ Summer Exhibition in London, one of the leading contemporary art events in the world.

The initial impression of Setenay’s work, even before attempting to scrape under the surface of her artistic tale, lies in her uniquely Turkish, Oriental colours compacted through her artistic handwriting temperimental. No modern art devotee is immune to the powerful impressions of her canvases. Art critics quite righteously noticed thet her paintings are “a reflection of an expressionistic purgatory, with canvases drenched in energy.” The energyin question is potent, almost masculine. The occasional triangular shapes that the artist paints are symbol of such energy, although Setenay also applies the techniques of calligraphic abstraction in her work.
Turkish artist canvases have turned into a harmonic outcry of colours and are nothing more than a reflex. One gets the impressions that the colours in her art seem to gush out of the very spring of her soul. The backgrounds, mostly white, black or gray, have a soothing effect on he viewer and at the same time bring out the main motifs through an emphasized contrast of colours and light.

Having seen all of her paintings, one dares to conclude that Setenay Özbek is stil searching for her ultimate style by experimenting on her, apparently ascending, art track. After all, isn’t that what “A Journey Towards Hope” and “Through Space and Time” are all about?
This is the first time a Turkish artist is exhibiting in Valjevo. She is presenting fifteen oil and acrylic canvases of different formats. All we can hope for is that no spactator, even the toughest of the skeptical art consumers’ society, will be left un impressed.

Radovan Lazareviç
7 August 2009






Unconditional Love in Infinite Time and Space...

...and so on to the end, to the invisible end, through the tenuous labyrinths of time. —Borges

When you have a lot to say and if you feel inadequate in expressing these in words, and moreover, if you are also a master of different forms of language, you would move towards the “language” that best explains your words. In fact, for Setenay Özbek, who has also done some writing and film making, the art of painting has become the language through which she can express herself best. In this adventure of hers, she has made progress in the infinite expression of abstract painting. Abstract art, which can make one dream of that which is impossible to think of, has enabled this artist to experience her own universe and to use the language of colours. As she emulates Hans Radecker’s expression, “Abstract art is each individual’s experiencing his or her own universe”, she delves into the depths of her own self and that of the universe and reflects the experiential in her inner world.

In her abstract figurative compositions she seeks unconditional love in the illusion of roads, persons, personalities, lives, experiences and judgements intersecting, meeting, coinciding and forking out in infinite space and infinite time.

There are so many things she wants to say such that the painting on her canvas is neither a fully lyrical, non-figurative abstraction, nor geometric abstractions. Setenay’s painting is rendered unique as she integrates these two classifications.

The colours within the delineations of abstract figures express different ideas, as it were. Aldous Huxley says, “It is not a good idea for all of us to have the same opinion. It is differences of opinion that bring out creativity.” As if she wants to support this view, she uses the therapeutic effect of colours on people. Often clean, untarnished colours; yellow, red, green, mauve are reflected on the canvas through the artist’s inner stimuli in an impromptu manner and achieves a lucid, transparent effect at times.

As the texture of her painting transforms into forms other than those one can visually see, she offers to her spectators emotions that cannot be expressed and put to words. In this domain, her painting is lyrical non- figurative. As we look at her painting as a whole though, there is a shift from abstract figurative to a geometric constructivism. The impressions of Picasso, Braque, Leger and Kandinsky are obvious but the style is unique to her.

Setenay has a number of collections she has created over the years. One is “Inner Reminiscences” while the other is the series of paintings extending from 2005 to 2009 entitled “Across Land and Time”. She says for these paintings: “... these paintings reflect, in a sense, my recent thoughts about the goings away, my feelings about time and space and about being in motion. A situation of constantly changing locations, being across countries, continents or even beyond spaces...”Inner reminiscences” had to do with the cosmos, with existence and spiritualism...while this lot is more worldly...a human venture on the road to peace and unconditional love...”

The artist gives herself away through the colours, textures and unique style she employs. In her abstract expressionist approach, we observe that she has started using colours with greater mastery in her search for depth and the third dimension. As the white strives to destroy all the other colours it wipes away the impressions of the past; while on another canvas, night blue signifies infinity. This is up to the viewer. Whatever you imagine and feel is what you see. You could be pessimistic or joyful. It is that person on that infinite road that knows it. You can meet in infinite space and infinite time in unconditional love that has no expectations,. Vassily Kandinsky says, “Each work of art is a child of time and more often a mirror of our feelings.”

Missing meanings acquire a new sense at a glance. Each time, through the covering, concealing white on the canvas or in the shades of blue, the new perception moves the viewer towards experiential emotion through the spatial movement. Different perceptions are resolved through the colour of time that describes the painting. You therefore realise that the colours on Setenay’s paintings soothe you, give you hope and overcome your pessimism. You see that the vibrant, changing shades of colour are expressions of her own thoughts in the language of painting, as if she is making a reference to her book, “No one can be anyone else (2005)”. This is “the uniqueness of people and the impression they leave on us”.

In her story “Stellar Times” Setenay says: “Everything changes every moment. The colour of the sky, the colour of the sea, trees, seasons and I am changing, as if I know what I am going to live through, before I live it.”

People, that are destroyed, crumbled away and transformed on the roads that we need to pass through unconditionally, the momentary roads without return...Our world; a world that we have to face through the compelling reality of being human beings as racism, discrimination and global crisis are reflected into a war, a world the primitiveness of which we still cannot accept....

Our hungry world that nourishes its existence as if it rejoices in further accelerating the destruction of man in the power of money that feeds the ego and the nuclear and biological weapons that replaced the bow and arrow of the primitive man...Our lives and our world where purity and cleanliness turns into dirt, hatred and jealousy and in turn into destruction and the strife to whitewash all these with “white”...Setenay paints her own story where, despite life’s constant adversities and disillusionments, she captures infinite space and infinite time through a constant change of space and moves on the road to unconditional love.

When man takes on the responsibility of the universe with compassion and understanding, without any conflicting vested interests involved, he might then see that life is no more a road that needs to come to an end. Man can then reach the beauty and wisdom of life and discovers infinite life when he realises that every moment is “now”. The only road to infinite space and infinite time is the road to love. The road to love without expectations and without conditions...

Critique by S. Sema Olgaç 2009

Translated by A. Mesut Önen


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