IMAGE/TRACE
Burcu Yağcıoğlu
“İmage/Trace”
6 September – 20 October 2007
Artvarium – Proje4L/Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul
Curator:
Isin Önol
The stain effect of liquid and pictorial representation comes together to create delicacy in the fashion of drawing. The decorative elements do not spoil the feeling of plainness in the entire picture where the monochrome does not create monotony. Stagnant appearance, independent from the viewer and the artist, is in a secret motion: the chemistry of paper, colours, stains modify in time.
Rather then considering paper as a material and the surface to be painted, she transforms it into a medium. While playing with half visible, half secret images, she creates and experimental platform for her paintings in process. Making probably never ending experiments on a variety of paper types, she starts from the traces of liquids on paper. Before starting to new drawings, Yagcioglu covers some of her papers with lemon juice. While lemon juice chemically reacts with paper, she starts her drawing/paintings with brown ink. Then the brown colour of the ink that is to get lemon juice that is slowly going to become barely perceptible and the lemon juice that is going to get darker and darker brown play the key role on the transformation process of these paintings. Therefore, viewing these painting/drawings only once becomes an aborted experience, where the exhibition calls the viewer to be revisited.
“When a visible image hides it self simultaneously as it is seen, it provides an endless space to be kept behind it” says Yağcıoğlu. The half visible depictions that are shown to the viewer only through some clues and cloth like motive become a partial dimension that is presented before this endless space. Both on a gigantic surface and on her small size works, and both on heavy bulk papers or on very thin voile this impression maintains its effective impact.
