“Peninsula” Paintings by Su Yücel

Su Yücel’s exhibition, in which she has been painting the mountain villages of the south for nearly two years, can be seen at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery between December 19 and January 20.

Su Yücel’s painting exhibition bears the title “Peninsula,” which means “peninsula” in Latin. Speaking about the exhibition—focused on the mountain villages of Bodrum and particularly Datça–Kocadağ—the artist says: “With its abandoned houses, narrow streets, stray dogs, cats, goats, geraniums hanging from windows, coffeehouses, courtyards, brooms, cacti, bay trees, oleanders, baskets, vegetation, geography, daytime and nighttime, I am exhibiting the impressions Peninsula has left on me.”

In Su Yücel’s paintings, happy cats stretched out in the grass, wildflowers spreading across the canvas, and village coffeehouses hidden among greenery carry the warm colors of the South. With strong brushstrokes, Su Yücel creates a vibrant explosion of color on her canvases. Commenting on Su Yücel’s painting, her father Can Yücel says, “There is great ferocity in her essence, and terror in her brush.”

In addition to approximately forty canvases, Su Yücel also includes in this exhibition paintings she created based on poems written by Can Yücel in Datça. “The poems in my paintings contain my father’s own handwriting. Both my exhibition and my father’s new poetry book are a fine example of collaboration between a father and daughter, a poet and a painter,” she says.

These ten illustrations by Su Yücel, to be exhibited at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery, will also appear in Can Yücel’s new book titled Maaile.

SU YÜCEL
Born in London in 1961, Su Yücel won first prize in the 1974 PTT Stamp Illustration Competition. In 1984, she participated in a group exhibition at the Monte-Change Gallery in Strasbourg, followed by her first solo exhibition at the Galata Art Gallery in Istanbul. She graduated from the Strasbourg Academy of Fine Arts in 1985. In the same year, under the patronage of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, she participated in the “Spring Fair” exhibition held in Wachen. Between 1984 and 1994, she held more than ten solo exhibitions in Amman (Jordan), Seville (Spain), Vancouver (Canada), Ankara, Istanbul, and Ürgüp, and took part in numerous group exhibitions abroad.