As part of its April program, Milli Reasürans Art Gallery presents the first solo exhibition of a young painter: Murat Aksoy and Journey Beyond Time. Murat Aksoy graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University in 1998. In the same year, he participated in the Young Painters Competition held within the TÜYAP Art Fair and was awarded first prize as the “Young Artist.”
Murat Aksoy’s paintings are composed of landscapes. Yet what they convey is neither an impression nor an interpretation of nature. Instead, they present a timeless, abandoned, and fantastical world constructed through the artist’s journeys between dream and reality. Over time, human figures gradually entered what had initially been purely natural compositions. Aksoy describes the relationship between humans and nature as “living unreal on earth,” adding: “The journeys I imagined drew me into different realities of life. In this environment, people live with sensitivity, melancholy, and all their strength.”
The sea emerges as the principal element in Murat Aksoy’s works. Light, meanwhile, reveals different appearances in the reconstruction of the natural world shaped around the sea. Fragments of nature surrounding the sea confront the viewer across the pictorial surface as textured, rugged forms. Through this imagery, nature simultaneously emphasizes its own existence and power with an intense realism while also evoking unreal, fantastical impressions. As the artist moves along the delicate boundary between reality and unreality, his paintings cease to belong to any specific time. At the same time, their fictional and fantastical qualities inevitably remind viewers of familiar science-fiction imagery, directing them toward the future. Far from objecting to this, the artist states: “My greatest wish is to share my concerns about the future of the relationship between humans and nature.”
In this exhibition, Murat Aksoy also includes portrait studies. The artist explains: “At first I painted portraits. Then I began painting landscapes. Later, the human figure entered those landscapes. Eventually, portraiture drew me back again.” The characteristics of his landscape paintings are immediately evident in these portraits as well. Therefore, it can be said that this distinctive perspective and style constitute the defining characteristics of the artist’s personality.