“In her current series exhibited at Millî Reasürans Art Gallery, Burcu Aksoy is not afraid to step into the darkness of our existence in order to discuss the state of mind after crossing the borders of logic and rationality. In her fragmented images, she depicts interiors of mental hospitals in order to critically discuss the meaning of sanity and insanity in the context of psychology and psychoanalysis. Mistrusting any objectivity and universalism of reality and its perception, instead of linearity, her work is characterized by multidimensionality. She intertwines elements of various rooms so that a complex spatial abstraction occurs. Although being based on actual interiors of mental-hospitals, the traditional notion of perspective and composition becomes obsolete in her photos. Instead, an attractive multitude of spatial views appears in an eclectic and pluralist aesthetic that refers to the heterogeneity of our world.

After dismembering the actual spaces, she combines different parts of the mental hospitals for creating a spatial kaleidoscope, where orientation, gravity, perspective and other usual guidelines for understanding reality are invalid. The spectator gets drawn into a visual tornado, where Aksoy intertwines details of interior and exterior spaces as well as structural elements of architecture and furnishing. Although her images burst of lines, shapes and textures, and therefore rather follow an aesthetic of fullness, a strange feeling of emptiness and loneliness occurs. Also, supported by the nearly total lack of colour, a rather dark and uncanny atmosphere dominates the works. Black, grey and white tones characterize the spaces. On the one hand, this monochromy supports the graphic character and the dynamic of the speeding lines and swirling shapes. At the same time, the lack of colour seems like the last prove for the absence of life, joy and happiness. And here, obviously, Aksoy reveals her negative and critical opinion about the meaning of mental hospitals in modern society.”

Marcus Graf