Once upon a time…

In the faraway lands,
where everything has changed
and nothing has changed,
a beacon fire has burned
to the old fisherman
waiting in the high mountains…

Before winter is coming,
in the most unknown
strangest forests
in the most unvisited
deserted deserts
in the most sinister caves
in the deepest valleys
in uncharted skies,
he had been wandering around
with red deers... 

In the seven stages of his life,
accepted at the table of
king & queens
of the seven realms,
excluded from their table.
Searching for his seventh
and last loneliness,
to the old fisherman...

Jan 2024

Aşkın Akman

Kuşadası  

AŞKIN AKMAN’S BREAKTHROUGH OPERATION

Yalçın Sadak

... 

 So, what should be done? Is there a chance to form a detached relationship with the ‘epidemic’ of contemporaneity or, more precisely, market demand? In my memory is stored a reproach by Picasso who has lived long enough to witness the process. We, he said, - as far as I remember -, had retreated to try to do our best, but nowadays they are captivated by fashion. Retreating to do the best one can; can it be a safe haven for those who occupy themselves with art today? The following suggestion by Nietzsche can be a solid answer to this question: Rather despair than submit yourselves. In my opinion, in all fields of art, those  

“who perceive the indices and signatures of the archaic in the most modern and recent” and who experience “contemporariness” in a way that it “inscribes itself in the present by marking it above all as archaic” (Agamben), without being carried away by the market’s vicious circle, can have the chance to survive. Or those who dedicate themselves to their works to such an extent that they wait for that ‘epidemic of contemporaneity’ to fade away.

Aşkın Akman walks this path. His expressions are definitely ‘extreme’ to the extent that they cannot be attributed to the psychic self (artist subject). Colour, texture and expression objectify an aggression that nearly amounts to savagery. Scraped, filled textures stratifying almost through strokes are each sheer traces of struggle; colours seeing how the land lies almost on the edges of existence compete, as it were, for taking deadly risks. An untamable, extremely energetic desire bursts out of his portraits and faces, but it is such a transcendental desire that it cannot be reduced to that or this record of experience.

(Akman has implied a fisherman’s face, as black as pitch, deep dark blue, with blue and pale scarlets and a cruel expression in the eyes... Most importantly, the colours are in the form of strokes. I would like to indicate that I have not witnessed such a difficult extravagance of expression until now. It is, as it were, observing us, the spectators, from the remoteness of our existence; it is pre-personal and transpersonal.) Akman looks at the empty canvas, while being extremely aware that it is ‘overcrowded’ with ways of seeing. Confrontation is traumatic; the siege is extrinsic and certainly metastatic. The passionate wildness in expression and implementation can be attributed to the original command in this case; to the desire to paint that corresponds to the desire to write distinguished by R. Barthes as the original command to write. Each painting by Akman is a breakthrough operation since it is motivated by this incorrigible desire that absorbs like a black hole the ‘appetite’ for relationality as part of the anxiety of contemporaneity and is not to be consumed in any circumstances: Its concern is to feverishly clarify archaic traces in the present moment.

He is making fearless moves between the past and the present; he has risen in the absence of now and makes an effort to make a breach of language in the siege. Just at this point, I need to mention that Akman is highly equipped in terms of academic background and skills. Namely, his extravagance is practically due to the desire to displace and rail against language. This desire is stored in the extravagance of expression and should function as an extra element of interpretation in Akman’s paintings. Yes, in this hazy environment of contemporaneity where stylistic ruptures seem impossible, that desire is not sufficient to make breaches in the siege but has a very important function. It keeps the ethics of doubt alive and evokes the wish to return in a more analytical way to the intensive rhetoric of modernity regarding the necessity of the distance between life and art.  

[1] Çağdaş Sanat Nedir?, İletişim yay. 2013, s.11

1. [2] A.g.y. s.80

Aşkın Akman

Born in 1964, Akman works and lives in Istanbul. After his graduation from the Mechanical Engineering department at METU, he was trained in the studio of Azerbaijani State Artist, honorary member of Russian Art Academy Associate Prof. Teymur Rzayev and started his painting education at the Fine Arts Faculty of Yeditepe University in 2013. He graduated from the same University in 2021 with a master's degree.

He opened his first solo exhibition in 2018 and his second solo exhibition in 2020 at Galeri/MİZ in Istanbul, took part in Step/Istanbul in 2020, Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair in 2021, and then Art on Paper New York Art Fair in 2023 as an artist of the same gallery.