Turkish Artist Volkan Diyaroglu - artmarketblog.com You may have read one of my previous posts praising the work of Turkish born artist Volkan Diyaroglu who has recently been included in the Saatchi Gallery top ten for the third time
stone that we find? Doesn’t the stone want to tell things too?
T.C. Another characteristic of your work is, without a doubt, the scale of the canvases. In this exhibition the concept of an “environment” is very present. One could say that it underlies the concept of “site specific”, of work created for a specific place. In this sense, what is the relationship between space and your painting?
V.D. Scale as a characteristic of a work is, in a certain way, relative. There are neither large works nor small works. The scale is within the work. My paintings exist with their dimensions and I think that they are as they should be, neither smaller nor bigger. They’re normal, as they should be. But in the Delik exhibition, the works were made specifically for that space. Normally what I do is work freely, without thinking about the space in which I’ll show my pieces. I don’t even think about exhibiting them while I work. But at times it’s interesting to create a specific space, as on this occasion, because if you know beforehand, where and how they will be shown, you start to incorporate the sense of the place as well as their scale. This clearly affects the work, although you don’t want it to, and at the same time they are very related. It’s difficult to explain. In the end, seeing my works in different places is like an optical illusion. Each place has a concrete form and history. In each place, the light is different. A while ago, I exhibited in the thirteenth century Abbey in Paris and that was also work made for a specific place. Between each there’s a connection between work and space. It’s strange to dismount the work from its primary space and see it later in another place; it’s like a cut in time, a small earthquake.
T.C. I’m struck by the homogeny of the background colours chosen for this exhibition. They can be summed in backgrounds of red, yellow, blues, or greys. Is there some reason to do with style or language that determines the production around a set of determined colours?
V.D. For this exhibition, I worked within a set time enclosed in my studio. Before starting to work I had no idea what I was going to do, I only knew the sizes and number of canvases that I had to create. I got into a Delik which in Turkish means hole, and while I worked I felt, saw, heard and maybe thought. The colours came to me and struck inside my head. I never have understood people who thought about the composition, colours, or form before starting to paint. In regards to the background, I don’t believe that they are present as a concept, and for me the colours are my words that in reality don’t exist. Everything is grey and so are words.
Finally, after finishing these nineteen paintings, I look at them and it seems to me that
