Olgu Ülkenciler

Ever since her first exhibition, Olgu Ülkenciler, who has focused on the established order and the subject trying to transform herself/himself, continues to address the transformation undergone by the masses and the idea of the individual at the heart of this sweeping transformation. After choosing an intellectual basis for her serial work, she determines an aesthetic tone to support the chosen basis. She then borrows such forms of visual culture as are relevant to her subject matter, so as to offer a whiff of the Zeitgeist. Her paintings – which she enriches with geometric elements, motifs and graphical components such as typography – are developed with coloring and certain technical adaptations in line with the critical thinking it serves. Deriving their power from stains, the surface of the paintings is infinitely vibrant; uncontemporaneous elements that are relocated onto these surfaces are borrowed from their individual contexts but are an integral part of the paintings. Although these paintings do not hide their technique of collage and retain their fragmentary nature, they integrate all the different elements into an indelible whole. By using the same color in various densities rather than resorting to semitones, not to mention the presence of opaque white and bright white, or black over black, a surface rhythm is constructed with a fragmentary sense of depth.