izinsiz gosteri

t's very difficult to write about an artist and her work because it requires expressing the hidden secrets of the painting in a shape of writing that conveys it's emotional message.The only way to see and to write about what is behind the paint is to be able to read these paintings. However, one should not forget that each process of reading is a separate quest. Besides, each and every quest has its own place that can be observed within a specific frame of perception.

When I take a retrospective look at Feriha Tuğran's art I see that many elements have changed, however, colour has always remained a priority. She's passionate about colour. Since her early work, when an abstract expressionalism dominated her paintings, colour has never ceased to be the defining factor of her art. Tuğran uses colours as a tool to enrich her paintings with poetic tones and with a complex structure. Colours always give her paintings the feeling of mobility in time and space. It seems that she uses them as if they are distilled from an inspiring, spiritual and rich spectrum that has been created in her imagination. Despite an overt use of colours, her inclination towards imagination rather than knowledge provides a simplicity in her paintings. That's why, as Mehmet Ergüven points out, this simplicity gives "a sense of reality" to her art.

A bird's eye view of Feriha Tuğran's paitings show us a unique style which appears to be a combination of abstract and naïve art. Feriha Tuğran's bridge between these two styles runs through all of her paintings. Spots or hardly visible figures in her early works are now changed into clearly defined images and the way she uses colour gives her paintings an abstract atmosphere. Although first painting the canvas with colours and spots then drawing dominant figures on them creates confusion, there's always a stability and an emptiness in her paintings. The stability of her art comes from the confusion.

Artists periodically use specific subjects. When we look at their work we can see associations and reflections of these topics. I think one should consider Feriha Tuğran's latest paintings as a whole and interpret them as if they're a part of each other. All plastic elements in her recent paintings are drawn in such a way that as they tell us a story. In her work she always uses the same figures : little girls, childish women with faces of a young girl ( all these women have the same face and expression so I believe they are the painter herself ), innocent animals, bicycles……. These figures seem like the pieces of a big puzzle.

In Feriha Tuğran's paintings childish women and little girls are drawn in a way as if their childhood has taken away from them. Maybe for that reason they seem mature. If they are examined carefully it's easy to see a naughty child behind their compliant and sober appearance who tries to make the spectator into a part of a game.

Animals are Feriha Tuğran's unchanged figures in her paintings. They are always drawn in a way that they become fetish objects or totems more than what they are. They metaphorically represent human nature in a similar way to Kafka's use of animals in his writing. In her early paintings her sinister animal figures changed into naïve, innocent figures. By doing that Feriha Tuğran was trying to paint her ütopia; a peaceful, naïve world. As I mentioned before, piece by piece she tries to paint her biggest dream but I keep asking myself why she does this ; does she want to show us her utopia as a haven to run and hide in from the cruel world, or to show us somewhere that she has reached. Nobody, including the painter, knows that.
Trying to comment on an artist and her paintings is a pschological marathon. There isn't a specific way to interpret art. When you try to interpret the figures and topics that are used you are actually realizing yourself; the things by which you are effected. Thus, by interpreting Feriha Tuğran's art style, I am also trying to understand myself.