The sixth solo exhibition by Erkut Terliksiz at x-ist entitled “Freaks of Nature” is shaped by the amorphous figures identified with the artist himself and the colourful reflections of his infinite imagination. Facing the audience with a narration overflowing the boundaries of the normal, Erkut Terliksiz conveys to the audience in his exhibition his own life and experiences not from a personal perspective but from a point of view that stretches to all times and the whole society. While the artist reinterprets the figure standardized by expectations of perfection and by all normalizations and limitations and creates a feeling of opening the doors of a pleasant world at first sight, by using a surrealistic expression, he makes the audience confront with what is avoided as it observes his paintings. By means of the flawed surfaces of found materials that have become the essentials of his technique and the intermingling forms and figures that he conveys to his canvas, Terliksiz invites the audience to explore what is behind the visible and to push the limits of one’s mind.
“The artist was convinced that censorship of human errors and vices (even though this may seem peculiar to eloquence and poetry) can also be the object of painting, and has chosen as subjects for his work, from the multitude of extravagances and mistakes that are common in any civil society, the concerns and common lies, authorized by custom, ignorance or interest, those that he believes most apt to supply material for ridicule, and at the same time exercise the artist’s fantasy. This creator has neither followed the examples of others, nor has he copied from nature”.
* An extract from the article by Ricardo Centellas Salamero in the exhibition catalogue, published on Pera Museum Blog.