"Felluce"
Known for his film "Nowhere" and novels, Tayfun Pirselimoğlu presents himself with a painting exhibition at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery this time. The exhibition is accompanied by a story written by Tayfun Pirselimoğlu himself, and the book of the exhibition is designed similarly. In this aspect, the exhibition resembles a "wall" illustrated novel. In the paintings, you can find the characters and events mentioned in the story.
The story opens the door that the artist wants to immerse the audience in. If these paintings were presented without the story, a completely different exhibition might have emerged. The title of the story, "Felluce", undoubtedly evokes the dramatic events of recent years in Fallujah. Fallujah remains fresh in our memories with its desperate people, wounded everywhere, dead bodies, and most of all, the faces of dead children, even though it has been turned into hell by bombs and "punished". Despite the direct associations created by its name, the story and paintings do not unfold in the present day. Contrary to expectations, Pirselimoğlu immerses the audience in both today and yesterday, in a fantastical world. From this point on, a kind of dark humor begins to emerge in Pirselimoğlu's exhibition. The story and paintings drag the audience into an adventure with unbelievable heroes and creatures within a fantastical world. In the end, what remains in our ears is the "fluttering of the wings of Seven Eight Angel Pasha", announcing the deep humor in the contemporary artist's view of human drama. He enables us to look again, with the sensitivity of an artist, at a human drama that we all see on television and in the press, which we have gradually become accustomed to or frozen in response to. Despite all the visible realities of the events, processes, and dramas that affect all of our destinies and futures, he strongly conveys all the absurdity, even the nonsense behind them. Felluce is no longer just a story that some of us watch on television with indifference, and some with reaction; it becomes our story too; We become Felluce Felluce becomes us, or all humanity, universalizes.
Tayfun Pirselimoğlu's paintings do not just form the visual aspect of this story; on the contrary, each one ensures that the viewer returns to this world with a deeper sense and increasingly universal perspective.
In this exhibition, we can say that Tayfun Pirselimoğlu combines the richness gained from being a writer and filmmaker with his actual art, painting. The strange integration of painting and story in Tayfun Pirselimoğlu's exhibition is probably the secret of the exhibition's attractiveness and strikingness.
