Gültekin Bilge is a Turkish Cypriot Artist, born in 1945. He received his M.A. from the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts where he studied under Devrim Erbil and Ali Çelebi before graduating from the atelier of Dinçer Erimez. Bilge’s journey through life has not been easy. He was unable to paint for many years after losing the use of his right hand when he was shot in the 1974 Cyprus War. This injury led to a dark period in his life, full of anger, pain, frustration, powerlessness, isolation and loss of identity. These emotions find full expression in his artworks. During the long period of recovery he worked as an art teacher whilst continuing to follow developments in contemporary art and searching for ways to create a style that could be recognized as Turkish. Gradually he recovered sufficient use of his right hand to enable him to develop the Turkish Weave, Whirling and Dissolve techniques that have become his own language of expression.
In 2005 Bilge returned to painting full time. Making up for lost time he worked at a furious pace to build up his portfolio. Whilst living in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus he did not exhibit internationally because of embargoes on trade and cultural exchange. Since moving to Scotland in late 2011 he has exhibited in USA, Canada, Australia, Japan and throughout Europe. He has received many awards, including 1st Prize at the London Art Biennale (Applied Arts) and the Leonardo Award (1st Prize Applied Arts) at the Biennale of the Art Museum of Chianciano.
Bilge's artworks have a haunting emotional quality. He paints in terms of expressive energy, combining strong colour, light and shade in fluid forms to produce a multiplicity of abstract portraits, many hidden deep within the composition. The portraits range from large to small creating a rich dense texture and expressing a range of emotions that reveal a dark and troubled internal landscape. Bilge describes himself “digging deep” into his intuition, emotions and personal experience to express his thoughts and feelings about culture, society, politics and the impact that different ideologies have on people’s lives.
Working in mixed media, Bilge makes his own paints from tree roots, mixed with oils, alkyds and resin. He paints wet on wet onto board. Since 2010 he has painted on natural wood shapes and carved wood as a means of breaking free from the convention of working within a rectangular frame. Recent works are assemblage of found objects including pebbles, twigs and other wood forms. His early influences were Bosch, Rembrandt, Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky, and Chagall, but mostly he works from nature.
Statement
The mother thought or central concept of my work is concealment. My artworks point towards what is hidden and question why this happens.
Nobody can know all that is inside another person. I see that human beings hide or partially mask their thoughts, feelings and motivations, even in many cases from themself. I observe that human relationships are not open and there are many hidden agendas in personal, social and political life. I came to understand this psychology by watching the decisions, behaviours and actions of individual people around me and of the political actions of nation states.
When I look to nature, all my life I could see expressive faces hidden in the trees, rocks, stones, pebbles, waterfalls, rivers and clouds. My idea is that faces hidden in nature are a metaphor for the way humans hide their thoughts, feelings and motivations.
In my art I join these two observations to show that many things in human society are obscured. I achieve this by concealing many abstract faces inside the colours and textures of my works in the same way that I see these faces hidden in nature. Of course, many people do not see these hidden portraits in my paintings in the same way that they don’t see them in nature. I want to show that most people only notice superficial aspects of external reality and question why so many people do not perceive what is happening below the surface. Most people don’t recognise that much goes on in a secret dialogue, behind closed doors or beneath the veil. In my artworks I explore the reasons for this hiding from deeper reality. I question why people are content to sleepwalk through life, blind to what is happening around them. I want my paintings to help people wake up from the effects of social conditioning and brainwashing so that they can see what’s really going on in the world.
All works, images and written materials © Gültekin Bilge
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