Anonymous Guest 06 Jun 2006

Nihat KEMANKA^LI He was born in 1971 in Balikesir  Turkey. In 1992, he entered Hacettepe University School of Fine Arts majoring in Ceramics. In 1994, he entered the Art Department of the same Faculty. He completed his first wall painting at the Posiedon Hotels pool wall located in Marmaris in 1995. In 1996, TEM 459, a group of artists comprised from both Ankara and Istanbul, opened their first display at the Dam Gallery in Ankara. Between the years of 1997-1998, he completed a bus painting for Golbasi Municipality and a wall paiting for Hacettepe Universitys French Language and Literature department. In 1998, he was invited to the art display entitled A Gift for the 75th Year of the Republic and attended this event as the youngest artist. In 1999, he joined various important mixed displays and graduated from Prof. Dr. Veysel Günays art studio. In the year 2000, he opened his first personal display at Ankaras Siyah Beyaz Art Gallery. In 2001, he published articles titled Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, and Art after War in Europe in SIYA magazine. Between the years of 2001 and 2005, he was invited to Kargart Gallerys traditional Confusion displays. Here, he displayed conceptual and vidoart pieces. Nihat Kemankasli currently carries out his art work in his studio located in 0stanbul. Also, he teaches courses such as Basic Art Education, Greek Mytholgy, Graphic Design, and Fine Arts at a well-established Vocational School of Higher Education in various departments (Fashion Design, 0nternet Journalism, Public Relations, Radio-Television Programming, Tourism and Hotel Management, Child Development, and Printing Press). Exhibitions: 2000 Siyah Beyaz Art Gallery Ankara - TURKEY 2004 Ilayda Art Gallery 0stanbul - TURKEY 2005 Ilayda Art Gallery 0stanbul - TURKEY 2006 Siyah Beyaz Art Gallery Ankara - TURKEY

Anonymous Guest 06 Jun 2006

Since the beginning of the 90s, there has been an awkward tendency in Turkish painting that is included per its sense of painting into abstract expressionism and has not solved its problems with the surface painting, yet strives to make a synthesis with figurative painting. It was inevitable that the surface painting, that has become more elite wordwide through figurative-decorative contributionsof Matisse and where the colour, mark and abstraction have reached a climax starting with Mondrian, would find its place in Turkish art, even after so many years. At this very point, Nihat Kemanka_l1, whose Works I have had the chance to follow only within the last quarter of the 90s, has win himself a significant and distinct spot trying to create his own figurative understanding of the surface painting (where, I think, he was very right in not borrowing the understanding of figures in colour painting, thus) , transforming the above mentioned figurative contribution into geometrical figures again. Kemanka_l1 reflects unto his works (please note that I am triying not to call them abstractions) the reduced state of life and experience on his canvas, his paper and his hand-made Works (one cannot name them collages). The clear indicator of his concern for composition and the status of the painting versus the figure are the geometrical or semi-geometrical figures that make up the impression of continuous displacement and remind us of pieces of a puzzle. His painting is not an adventure againts the target locale, namely the canvas. In his Works, one cannot point out any adventure of the paint, the line, or the design that builds up the linear entirety. We witness a process that is finished, lived throught, scrutinised, consumed and internalised long before moving unto the canvas becomes an object and a thing; Kemanka_l1s paintings, they open up to compositions which are formed by the building up of a mathematical structure and formed by the colour and mark and where a line becomes a mark; to way to solve the miraculous mathematics of his painting is to look at it with the reason. Turgay KANTÜRK