Layers and Grooves: Mesut Karakış
Past exhibition
Overview
Mesut Karakış has found an innovative way in the field of abstract painting. His treatment of paint and color as well as his painting method is unique. Without a brush or any other traditional tool, he creates appealing works that propel the concept of abstraction by truly revealing the power of color. While his early oeuvre was characterized by organic deformation and lyrical expressions, he later created paintings based on geometrical shapes, and highly dynamic matrixes of lines, where the grid dominated. In his current series of work though, besides further developing his painting style, Karakış managed to strengthen the psychovisual impact of his pieces by stronger focusing on color. Whereas in his previous series, organic shapes as well as geometrical grids were the leading elements in his compositions, in his current work, color has become an equal parameter.
Mesut Karakış’ artworks are born out of a complex dialogue between creation and erasure, as well as between revealing and hiding. His sophisticated and individual painting technique makes the artist permanently shift between construction and destruction to formulate his characteristic aesthetic of blurredness and clarity. In a highly complex dialectic of calculation and coincidence, the pieces refer to the multidimensional character of contemporary painting itself. In-between plan and chance, on a threshold of various schools of aesthetics, the works reveal the richness of the history of abstract painting as well as the current being of our visual culture.
His alternative method of painting, erasing, and revealing has not only a visual quality. Indeed, observing the results of this dynamic flux and gazing through the numerous layers of paint is a feast for the eye. Its visual impact is high and appealing. Though, this multilayered transparency and dynamism also refer to the state of our visual culture, where in high speed, pictures and incidents constantly melt into each other just to vanish in the flux of never-ending images. This is the reason why the processes of creating and erasing, as well as showing and hiding contain conceptual dimensions that refer to the current state of our reality. It is this dialectic that gives his work a meaning and importance that goes beyond the visuality of his images and the limits of his canvas.
Especially these last works proof that Mesut Karakış is still researching various forms of painting for continuing to find new ways of creating his art. He is permanently looking for alternative forms of artistic and painterly expression. The current exhibition at Galeri 77 promises new chapters in the story of Karakış’ journey through the world of abstract art. It is an exciting quest towards new aesthetics, and we are lucky to be able to join him.
Installation Views
