Interview in Gazete Oksijen, 2023
Behind The Sun Curtains Fall
1. How did you decide to create the works in your new exhibition? Why did you choose this name?
When I first spoke to the gallerist of March Art Project, Bahar, she said she liked the series Parks & Hotel Rooms, which has been exhibited in a Danish museum. I therefore chose to take some of the old works from that series, but add several new layers of expression to them. I quickly found that it worked really well for the works to become more complex, while at the same time keeping the same basic mood. It has been a pure gift to be able to work with an earlier story, as a backdrop for a new one.
The title Behind The Sun Curtains Fall came to me like lines in a poem. Curtains that must filter out some of the bright sunlight, so that something lies in shadow or is hidden. That the curtains fall also means that something ends (and something else begins). The fabric falls like curtains over the paintings and a drama seems to simmer behind the draperies. I associate the title with something existential and I think it opens up and brings the works together.
2. Can you talk about the bonds between the works in your exhibition?
The works speak together on different levels. The painted objects and interiors are like scenes in a narrative, all motifs I have painted of rooms, hotel rooms, and scenes from many travels around the world. so many of my paintings are like memories
and situations in my life that continue to inspire me. Simultaneously I experiment with my style and create connections between the works by letting the spontaneous and intuitive run free. From this, something surprising often arises.
For me, it is very much about experimenting with my artistic style, to get beyond some boundaries so that new things happen, and seeing what works. And at the same time finding a kind of balance so that the whole exhibition comes together and has a unified expression and a good flow. I also work a lot to ensure that the works express a certain kind of mood. Moods I would call it.
3. What are the advantages of making connections between different art styles?
If you mean creating connections between different expressions as figurative, towards the abstract, then I think that it makes the space larger and more complex and that it reflects reality very well; our surroundings we see, things we depict which acquire a symbolic value at the same time as we move around in thoughts, feelings and moods, memories and desires. I really like to create new connections and just like our spoken and written language has its own logics and rules that we can work with, so is the language of art: you can see and feel the connections.
4. How would you like the works in your exhibition to be interpreted?
I hope the works will draw the viewer into different spaces of poetic silence, and that the works both show and create a state of solitude in which the viewer has space to reflect his own inner life and sensations. I love when works of art expand or resonate with my own existential quest.
I also hope that the works with drapes of mesh fabric attract and mystify and pique curiosity. That one discovers that the veiled highlights what is going on behind (the sun).
5. Can you tell us the importance and difference of this exhibition in your entire art career?
It is my first exhibition in Istanbul and the city’s atmosphere and culture have a clear influence on me and on how the works and the entire exhibition have turned out. I consider it very positive that I cannot avoid, with my exhibition, entering into a kind of dialogue with the place where I am, the surroundings, the people. All the sensory impressions from this place in the world, slip in and become part of the expression of the works. In this exhibition I continue to experiment with unfolding my artistic work and I think a wild and poetic exhibition has come out of this, with many layers of stories. It is a very important exhibition for me personally and a very fantastic experience for me to do this exhibition here in Istanbul in the very beautiful March Art Project.