14 NOVEMBER – 9 DECEMBER 2017
Distinguish the Difference
Nuri Battal, stands against the current artistic production with a rightful objection. If there is no difference, where is the repeat?
Battal is very experienced in textural context. He has figural works, ratificated by pop art and facilitating the possibilities of digital media, and now he fills in his place. He clinks the clichés of pop with a momentary gesture.
It is fairly obvious how much pop is dominant in today’s artistic production. We mostly face with mechanised and dilute parodies. Battal stands off this trend. He proves this by setting an undeniable distance between him and pop art. I also take into consideration his statues set off by curved (used and thrown away) nails. It is possible to distinguish the points that differentiate him from C. Oldenburg with his choice of curve and colouring. A curved nail is a waste and Battal not only enlarges them but also honours them by painting them with flashing colours. So, where do these paintings differ?
Only a denotation can answer that question. A polysemy is always a multiplity of names and I suggest we should distinguish these paintings as abstract expressionist pop. Abstract-expressionist- pop, that is for sure the thing to distinguish. Pop art is fond of mediatic language; presentation clichés such as iconic, kitsch, cinema, photography, comics etc. However, generally it is busy with symbols. An expressionist abstract does not take its place in its account. Nuri Battal challenges this kind of a difference.
The pictures are fictionally plain, a calm colour on the background and another colour on the foreground, enhanced with baroque gestures. Gestures are momentary and unconscious, yet the colours suggest lightness, free of all kinds of dramatic burden. Of course, there are subsidiary pop artists, who worked abstract, but the colour in their works does not take on an expressionist style, yet placed as nearly as possible to a mediatic presentation. (For example, D. Hirst’s refined presentations of coloured points) Battal, who mobilizes his language with sudden emotional blasts and common sense unlike pop art, is on a problematic track.
Nowadays, it is not originality what is sought for, but difference. Even in the slightest difference. Or else we will keep on meeting with simulacrum. Pop art suits Battal, and Battal, as an inheritor of it, is not willing to take on what is ready. He endeavours to own the heritage on the basis of rightful and this path promises surprises.
The rest is at the hands of artist’s endeavour.
YALÇIN SADAK
