Ahmet Oran's Paintings From Canvas Surface to a Deep Inner Journey in Istanbul

The works of Ahmet Oran, a painter who has been living in Vienna since 1980, are at the Istanbul Millî Reasürans Art Gallery between May 11 and June 20, 1999.

The artist, who has held exhibitions in various European cities and whose works are at the Linz Modern Art Museum, is meeting Turkish art lovers.

Ahmet Oran says, "We were working at the Academy thinking that the way to become a master was to copy the old masters in the best way possible." However, these works could neither answer the questions in his mind nor satisfy his artistic soul. Finally, he followed his own path and after three years of Academy education between 1977 and 1980, he found himself at the Applied Fine Arts High School in Vienna. "I was very surprised to see that everyone in Vienna was painting in their own way," he says. After this, he began searching for "what is my path, my language?" He studied with Prof. Carl Unger for five years between 1980-1985 and with Prof. A. Frohner between 1985-1987. He started his painting education in Istanbul and completed it in Vienna at the end of the decade. He entered the world of painting with two exhibitions in Salzburg and Graz in the same year. He has held fifteen solo exhibitions to date, eight of which were in Vienna and the others in cities such as Berlin, Linz and Innsbrück, and participated in eight group exhibitions. The artist's works are in the Linz Museum of Modern Art.

The exhibition opened at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery in Istanbul is the artist's first important exhibition in Turkey. Gallery director Amelie Edgü states the following regarding the organization of the exhibition: “I knew Ahmet Oran through his works in Vienna and followed him with interest. Over the years, Oran managed to have his art accepted in Europe. He opened an exhibition in Turkey in 1986, when he was still a student. For this reason, Turkish art lovers did not know him. With the exhibition we organized, I can say that Turkish art lovers are meeting Ahmet Oran, whom they have heard of and whose successes they have followed, for the first time.”

Art historian Nazan İpşiroğlu says, “There is a very unique aspect between Oran’s paintings and his personality. The serenity seen in his paintings spreads from his personality to his surroundings. Such an integration between the creation and its creator is not an event that is encountered often.” According to İpşiroğlu, Ahmet Oran’s paintings do not have a discourse outside of themselves. The artist does not give names to his paintings. He stays away from associations. He leaves the viewers alone with the painting without any intermediaries.

Ahmet Oran’s paintings attract attention with their color choices and superficial applications that give the impression of monochrome at first glance. Despite being large-scale works, the eye can immediately see the entirety of the painting. Each painting creates a different atmosphere with its color. According to İpşiroğlu, “it gives a different personality that expresses a certain state of mind.” When you get a little closer to the paintings, you realize that the canvas that appears superficially has been processed in layers and that the painting has depth. As the eye wanders around the surface of the canvas, which has been processed with fine workmanship and turned into a special texture, it encounters unexpected large and small shapes that stand out from the gaps left by the artist and the lower layers, intertwined spots, and cloudy colors that sometimes intensify and sometimes dissolve. A dark color strip left at the top of the paintings indicates the beginning of the painting, announcing the depth of the painting consisting of layers.

Although Ahmet Oran's paintings appear before viewers as "the painting itself", detached from any kind of story, discourse, or association, the depth they carry draws viewers into the paintings, provokes them into an adventure into the canvas, and although they are works he made in a Western city, they announce the music of the Eastern world, consisting of an overlapping, constantly repeating rhythm, and the serenity and introverted mood created by this music. The journey into the canvas turns into an unhurried, constantly deepening, enjoyable journey filled with small surprises.