Illusion, Curiosity, Seeing

The act of seeing has the meaning of reaching maturity in the educational process. Until we make the transition from looking to seeing, what surrounds us are “things”. When we begin to see, the things transform into objects, and the names that have previously been given to them fit. From this point on, seeing, which is realised together with sensing  and feeling, enables us to make the transition to perceiving.

In the age we live in in particular, the difficulty we experience also begins right here, with “perceiving”.

In this era of intense media pressure, sight is dismembered and the true content is rendered invisible. We experience the illusion of the presentation, the perception of what is not real as the real image. Man consciously enters into this act. The exciting moment of sight, and thence to perception and the imagist world, to experiencing an exciting journey have been left behind. I consider that John Berger sums up the reason for this quite clearly in the follwing words: “Images are more polysemous than words.”

What Berger had in mind was the relationship between seeing and perceiving and the visible and the perceived. But at the same time such a relationship is dangerous. Seeing correctly produces proper perception. That is why this association must be destroyed with an illusion.

The reason for the existence of İmren Çalışkan Tüzün’s work and its importance emerges right here. At first glance the colours she has superimposed on the surface make us think of the colour codings we are familiar with. But then a sneaking suspicion is aroused; is there something hidden behind them? The question keeps nagging us. 

And as you walk away from the last painting, elements of the relationship between art and philosophy existing through the ages pass through your mind once more: Things, Objects, Reality, Curiosity.

Only this means that what we have observed in the exhibition is being questioned in our minds by what we already know. 

This means we are not accustomed to renewing what we know. And so familiarity is the perception that what is presented to us as real will not change, as it were. 

İmren Çalışkan Tüzün takes us on a journey from “Familiarity” to “Curiosity”, and from “What we know” to “What is distant from us” with her works.

Seeing rather than looking, questioning rather than passive observation.

Ahmet Tüzün
Literary and Art Critic

 

Translation: Valerie Needham