http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas/articles/2009/under_my_feet
Curatorial text about the exhibition, published in the catalog of “Istanbul Next Wave”, Modern and Contemporary art from Istanbul, organized by the city of Istanbul and the Academy of Arts in partnership with Kulturprojekte Berlin, as part of the celebrations to mark the 20 years of twin-town relations between Berlin and Istanbul. “Istanbul Next Wave” consists of 3 exhibitions: Istanbul Modern Berlin (at the Martin-Gropius-Bau); Under my feet I want the world, not heaven (Academy of Arts, Pariser Platz); Six positions in critical art from Istanbul (Academy of Arts, Hanseatenweg).
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For many decades throughout the 20th century the fundamental task of painting in Turkey has been to tell the story of Modernism, to describe the social life, to create memorable events and persons. The narrative aspect of painting ceased to be a central concern after photography and video, both providing instant narration and straightforward narrative, storytelling was dismissed as a popular interest. Since the 1990s the modernist orthodoxy has declined and a return to Realism with a new post-media criticism is rejuvenated. Necla Rüzgar’s aphorism and proverb based storytelling paintings are one of the most genuine examples of this trend. She follows the tradition but reverses the straightforward message to an intricate one and plays with the perception of the viewer. The viewer can intensely share interest in the fate of the figures that are depicted in her paintings. The small stories that are told in these paintings engage the curiosity of the viewer, because of their weirdness and transgression, because of their political content that for example depicts the tragedies caused by patriarchal system or by dogmas. She goes to the bottom of the culture and finds the basic connections between the verbal and the visual, uses proverbs and aphorisms and merges their meaning with the meaning of post-media images. In these paintings we can observe the juxtaposition of traditional and post-modern narrative element that determines the intuitive thinking of the general public.
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