Yüksel Arslan. Artures

Their contents deal with the relationship of thought and mysticism, science and the visual arts while taking up philosophical, literary and musical currents that can be designated as the foundation of Western thought, knowing full well that the insights anchored here would probably never have come about without the empirical values of others peoples and cultures.
Arslan does not make use of classic paints for his works, mixing instead pigments from diverse herbal extracts, bodily fluids and other natural elements such as flowers and grass in addition to such substances as oil, coal and stones. This process is a central component in the development of the pictorial invention and does not represent a distinct preparatory part of the creative act. According to Arslan, the origins of painting have increasingly been neglected since modernism or, at the latest, since the introduction of industrially manufactured paints. Like Jean Dubuffet, the artist endeavours to cast off the ballast of the present in order to extract the true essence. Arlan can only rediscover the original via things that have seemingly been overcome by culture, but in fact have only disguised by it, for example procreation and sexuality. He is familiar with cultural “ballast” through his long occupation with modern and ancient languages, history, philosophy, music and traditional cultures. But Arslan has come to the recognition that much of this does not correspond to the true essence of the human being, and in the process,

The exhibition is funded by