Distilled Paintings by Haşim Nur Gürel

Haşim Nur Gürel is exhibiting the works he has been preparing for the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery for three years between April 17 and May 31, 2003.

“This is my real face; as white as possible, as pure as I can come to terms with it, as sad as I will not hesitate to show you…” Haşim Nur Gürel invites viewers into the reckonings he has experienced on reality and reflection/reflection with his self-portraits reflected in a display mirror in his exhibition to be opened at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery.

The flower paintings that the artist has made without deviating from his line, the landscapes mostly painted on Burgaz Island, and his own face that he sees in display mirrors are not just the reflection of a reality in an original color world, with skillfully crafted shadows and daylights. These paintings are nourished by all the intuitive and perceptual processes of the artist that pursue the mystery of appearance and also contain a sincere reaction to mankind’s separation from nature. Instead of adopting an attitude that challenges reality by ignoring the space around him, Haşim Nur Gürel glorifies the beauty he sees as an intrinsic part of the order that surrounds us, and sees the art of painting as a means of aesthetic participation that affirms reality.

Levent Çalıkoğlu says the following about the artist’s works: “Haşim Nur Gürel has a way of perceiving that thinks about the meanings and necessities of the pleasure created by seeing, grasping the moment, penetrating time, and being able to create a picture from simple details we do not care about, and that thoroughly weighs the relationship between himself and the images waiting to be a picture in the world. In today’s ways of perceiving, where even the rules foreseen for the functioning of life are reduced to rules, his discipline of seeing, woven with inner reckonings, is related to a state and desire of being purely in oneself. Intersecting the counterparts of reality in the world of appearance and perception, breathing and questioning the moment, sensing the mystery of objects and living beings, and while doing all these, adding the knowledge left to him by tradition to his experiences, are the points that Nur Gürel’s art insists on…”

Haşim Nur Gürel’s exhibition of paintings distilled from time and reality can be viewed at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery between April 16 and May 31, 2003.