Focus
The Art of Fugue
About the work of Cigdem Aky
Painting as science, i.e. minus everything that could be interpreted into it. Nothing figurative, nothing that could trigger associations in the audience, no metaphysics, but full control. Only shape and color and light (conditions). Painting as an experimental arrangement. Strictly according to a defined concept: in the middle a sharply defined upright bar, around it wide, emphatically executed brushstrokes. The sober surrounded by gestures; the level-headed alongside the impulsive. The timeless meets the fleeting and forms a lasting bond. A moment becomes eternity and opens up the possibility to investigate how the two antagonists correspond. Painting under laboratory conditions.
In acrylic and oil on cotton, the painter Cigdem Aky (* 1989, Munich) combines the three elements depth, structure and color, creating autonomous color spaces that are precise in their effect, precisely because of the absence of any reference options. Lack of reference leads to unambiguity, each work conveys an exactly defined feeling. The combination of a set geometric element with gestural components leads to a series of unpredictable dialogues. Every work is an experiment with an open result. With her paint application, Aky starts a process, the further course of which she cannot and does not want to control. She leaves color tones to themselves, which then study, evaluate and update each other.
Aky's concept of varying a certain setting again and again and thus exploring the possibilities, limits and conditions of a system is reminiscent of experimental arrangements in the field of music, such as Johann Sebastian Bach's "Art of the Fugue" or the "Well-Tempered Clavier". Here a constant musical theme is successively declined in different keys. The sheer endless variation reveals what emerges beyond material, structure and concept and which hovers over all of this: a characteristic combinatorial essence. An extract of essence and effect. In her series of experiments, the artist practices philosophy with a brush. Cigdem Aky paints meaning.
Hansjörg Fröhlich, January 2020
ADRIENNE BROWN
How often has the end of painting been conjured up, only to find out that new questions can always be found. Cigdem Aky wants to prove that the painterly means are far from exhausted. It started figuratively, but then tried to develop structures that no longer allow associations. So she stacked sandwiches of color like thick upholstery cushions, then, like a painter during the test run, she laid wide strips of color criss-cross one above the other - whereby the luminosity of the colors comes into its own.
Meanwhile, Cigdem Aky is working on an opposite; the interplay of the constructive and the gestural. On the one hand absolute control and on the other hand that which arises impulsively and unplanned from the physical movement. In her current experimental arrangement, the young painter puts on a tight corset and starts each picture with identical placed bars. As with chess, this always the same starting situation enables countless options, every smallest step can lead in a different direction.
Lighting conditions and individual daily condition are the control instruments - and one color brings out the next.
The results sometimes seem bulky because the free, gestural parts seem to be rebelling against the separated and constructive elements. The harmony is disturbed, which makes these pictures almost uncomfortable. For Cigdem Aky, painting is above all a craft and a down-to-earth act in which color comes onto the canvas is nothing more. Every stroke reveals its origin. By remaining radically in the here and now, it robs the images of the metaphysical, the sweet illusions and ultimately even the aesthetic tickle. That may be sobering, but it is always consistent.
CHRISTHOP SCHÜTTE
If you want, you can still see figures in it. After all, Cigdem Aky started her academic studies in Munich as a figurative painter. Or at least rooms that she builds out of nothing but colored surfaces here, clear, bar-shaped and precisely placed shapes there. And again and again the color fields organized in this way point beyond the format. As if, instead of this one canvas, you see little more than a section, you only focus on the center of an entire gallery of pictures, as in the Pinakothek.
But as a student, first from Jerry Zeniuk and later in Karlsruhe with Helmut Dorner, whose current master student is the artist born in Munich in 1989,
you probably have no choice.
In view of the vocabulary and the simple and strict compositions with which Aky introduces himself for the first time in the Tristan Lorenz gallery in Frankfurt, one might first think of the paintings of significantly older artists such as Ulrich Erben or Jon Groom, which Lorenz also represents with his gallery . Artists who, despite their individuality, are firmly rooted in a constructively concrete tradition. On closer inspection, however, their interest seems much closer to that of their teacher.
Is the young painter concerned not only with the composition, but also with extremely dense, concentrated color spaces, such as those that characterize the work of heirs or grooms, but always recognizable in terms of area, form and color, gesture, style and texture; the parameters of all painting, which she tries out and varies picture by picture.
Sometimes Aky puts nothing but short dabs of paint close to each other and balances out such structures with almost trace-free areas: sometimes she tries out the gesture, which is vigorously hewn with a broad brush, and then the furor just appears to be nicely simulated, or a carefully created area appears painted over half-heartedly rather than determined. Occasionally this seems almost too calculated. This appearance is certainly a remarkable debut as a new gallery artist.
Dr. HAJO DÜCHTING
THE CORNER OF COLOR, DIESSEN, October 2014About the work of Çiğdem Aky
After starting out in figurative painting (portraits, interiors, landscapes), the young painter Çiğdem Aky turned completely from 2013 to abstract painting.
This is the logical consequence of her intensive search for a structure that does not impose itself on associations, but is nevertheless material enough to give the color, her actual theme, a "reason". The starting point of her investigations into color at the beginning of her studies was concrete work, in which however the detachment of the color from the object was already given.
An element of the image has increasingly emerged that can play a dominant role in both figurative and abstract painting: the stripe.
In one of her last figurative pictures, the “stripe landscape” (2012), this increasing fixation on this form of compositional structure has already turned into a high degree of abstraction. However, the painter inserted houses in her painting, so that the connotation emerged as a landscape.
In a next step, all objectively readable elements in favor of a completely abstract, autonomous image structure made up of color bars and stripes are eliminated. The composition is now made up of layers of intense colors, one on top of the other and intertwined, which are partly in the form of rectangular strips and partly in loosely gestural stripes.
The focus of Çiğdem Aky's painterly research lies entirely
undoubtedly looking for an autonomous color structure that can unfold in the picture without constraint, without being bound to fixed color-theoretical rules.
Vibrant primary colors alternate with more subdued nuances and also gray values, which, however, do not strive for a color-balanced balance, but support each other for self-reflective painting.
Color is a topic that many painters have never let go of for a lifetime.
Çiğdem Aky is also committed to this topic and has formulated her remarkable results.
SEVIL DOLMACI
Milliyet Art, August, 2017 (TR)
THE YOUNG THAT BRING A NEW BREATH TO THE ABOVE WITH THE COLOR PALLETARTIST
Çiğdem Akyiğit, who stands out with color values and tonality in her current abstract productions,He completed his undergraduate and graduate education in Munich and Karlsruhe Art Academy. Successful teenager
the artist wins the Oskar-Karl- Forster scholarship in 2013, it is hard to get in 2015is starting his master's degree with DAAD scholarship.
Borusan with his color touches on his canvas with a gestural attitude to his license.Professor also appeared in the collection. Jerry Zeniuk starts his education at the WorkshopÇiğdem AKY. Then again Prof. who has works that can contribute to color knowledge. ThomasScheibitz and Prof. Myriam Holme became his teachers. Professor continuing his master's degreeWorking with Helmut Dorner. Helmut Dorner, an important name in the international platform,Those who follow their works closely will realize that the testimony in Çiğdem AKY's paintingsThe free color spots we have made take their references here. AKY briefly as surnameThe young artist who prefers to use it still lives in Munich. Besides education life
AKY, which is also active in professional art life, with Tristan Lorens gallery in Frankfurtworking. Exhibiting exhibitions in Munich outside Frankfurt and already important collectiontakes place in exhibitions.
Çiğdem AKY, as I just mentioned, in its productions on canvas with acrylicit has shifted to the background and concentrated on colors. Although the debut works are figurative, the artist is short
After a while, it passes to abstractions and finally, with abstract spots that turn into lines,Finds. For AKY, the main character of my paintings is the color itself. All in the outside world
Consisting of spotted values made with a new space setup free from referencesThe compositions also take place in the current abstract German school. AKY, rich rabstract with tonal values captured on canvas with gestural brush strokes from enk palette
creates an original style between productions. Besides the artist canvas, paper, besides acrylicHe also worked with materials such as gouache and oil paintings. Different materials on the artist's canvason how to achieve the color balances and / or contrasts it captures in different textures.It is a source for their work. The color palette is very rich and widelyThe works of the artist, shaped, are based on "intuition" and "feelings". This is his work
creating an outline, sketch and improvised form without preliminary preparationrevealing. These works, which are the projections of the effect of light on the artist,
Instead of watching the work, the viewer, by including the viewer to the work, the artist's emotional stateit embodies with the thought of reflection. So this means that; according to the mood of the artist
their shaped works give a different meaning and feel to the audience. In his works, the artistinstead of using familiar, boring patterns that are a continuation of color,He prefers to present his harmony to the audience with an existential language. This is sometimes melancholic,
sometimes he does it with soft brush strokes. Your picture; theoretical, formal and technical aspectsHe creates his works using. The concept of “dialectics” due to German school education is also in the AKYIt manifests itself in the form of contrasts in its works. Name of your works
refusing to give, so that the pressure, conditioning and prejudice on the audienceHe leaves his works with the audience with all their nudity.
AKY makes a short but meaningful definition for his paintings: “I have the combination I created;the paint-filled balloons hit the wall and there is a big burst of color on the canvas
It is created. '
When looked carefully, textures of different thickness and fineness that appear in AKY paintings,It can be explained by different surface researches in the picture. “Multifocal” painting / shapingstyle artist's abstract movements that have existed in the world since the 50s are wellIt shows that you analyze. Paris School in the 50s in the compositions of AKYfrom the effects to the American Color Field Painting stream in the 60s, to the neo-geo stream in the 80sThere are references / references on a large scale. The artist is briefly both American
knows the abstract of Paris and the abstract of Paris very well and the German school on which it is basedestablishes its original language with education.
AHF; While color deals with light, it does not bypass the concept of "emptiness". Image surfacerich in colors in regions created by breaking down by horizontal and vertical brush strokessometimes reminiscent of the dynamism of Rothko sometimes Peter Halley variations ...
Different materials, different textures, different splits and different spots / strokes AKY,to watch how the experiments / researches of the abstract proceed on canvas with his adventurenecessary.
Next year after the artist's solo exhibition in Frankfurt, 2016Witnessing this adventure with his solo exhibition at his gallery, Tristan Lores Gallery in Frankfurt
We can.