2006 – Free Zone – Mustafa Pancar

open market II – beauty of various urbanization project / oil on canvas / 200 × 300 cm, 2005

SNAPSHOT

An adventure of narration lies behind this exhibition. By being divested of the thick viscosity of the meaning, by smashing completeness and by distorting.
By shattering time and space with layer upon layer of paint, the pictures are in the process of becoming assembled by the assignment of perpetual variations to the meaning and are constructing their own stories in paint.

It is as if Mustafa Pancar merely pretends to set up a construction and deserts the structure he has been working on at that precise phase of ripeness. The picture itself and the habitual partiality of the spectator are left hanging in limbo; the meaning should construct its own course.

The subjects also conform to this manner of creating. The emphasis is on the İstanbul of the citadel walls, today’s Laleli district, still with its atmosphere of an eastern marketplace. Such sites which have become transient, are the modern-day equivalents of the traditional eastern bazaars, all of which have replaced other established cultures by tearing them down to make their own place. Clusters of cosmopolitan folk, walking about and shopping. more…

open market III – ornamented shopping story / oil on canvas / 145 × 200 cm, 2005

leasure time – busy time / oil on canvas / 85 × 105 cm, 2005

SNAPSHOT

An adventure of narration lies behind this exhibition. By being divested of the thick viscosity of the meaning, by smashing completeness and by distorting.
By shattering time and space with layer upon layer of paint, the pictures are in the process of becoming assembled by the assignment of perpetual variations to the meaning and are constructing their own stories in paint.
It is as if Mustafa Pancar merely pretends to set up a construction and deserts the structure he has been working on at that precise phase of ripeness. The picture itself and the habitual partiality of the spectator are left hanging in limbo; the meaning should construct its own course.
The subjects also conform to this manner of creating. The emphasis is on the İstanbul of the citadel walls, today’s Laleli district, still with its atmosphere of an eastern marketplace. Such sites which have become transient, are the modern-day equivalents of the traditional eastern bazaars, all of which have replaced other established cultures by tearing them down to make their own place. Clusters of cosmopolitan folk, walking about and shopping.

Topics Mustafa had chosen in his earlier exhibitions were mostly from the rapidly-changing sociology, human activities, groupings and every-day social relationships (e.g. mud bath, film crew, the dispatch riders). The spaces and the subjects of the paintings resemble a toy set with no fixed moment, continually endeavouring to complete itself and transmuting with passing time. That which is being painted, has sundry instruments by which to observe this fluid environment and to give it irony during transference. The “snapshot” characteristic of photography is perhaps the most important of them. In the words of the painter, “A photograph is by nature flat and a surface…It has the effect of passing the visible through a photocopier… it is as indistinct, as untidy and as ordinary as the reality engulfing us…To me all photography is pieces of vision with no wholeness of significance; no frame is total and whole, but needs others. It is this effect of photography that makes my paintings boneless and dishevelled.”
Mustafa Pancar uses a photograph solely as a model. And then comes the transformation of the pictures into caricatures of the photography. Again in relation to the above-mentioned effect, he uses the concept of the “snapshot”, a source of momentary and urgent solutions essential for the painting both for being easily perceived and for its manner of being created.

In the usage of another of his tools, Pancar is like an architect who strives to explain his projects by unfolding section upon section of his blueprints. He offers us depictions of Laleli which he has created by using besides the minimal delicacy of the paper, and the violent cubes of colour born of elegant strokes of the Flomaster. Description turns into the lightest of touches. This leisurely approach, changes the habitual look of the viewer from a mutual satisfaction, into a bewildered question mark. What the viewer is looking at, are fast-flowing and untidy clusters of images. Assigning visibility to these scattered particles with no individual meanings of their own, carries these atmospheres onto an island of sense made of memories within the logic of a comic strip.
Whether symbolic or whether in other different functions, photography is practically a partner of life. The possibility of the photograph - whose aesthetic value is continually disputed -creating its own sense, as well as its flexible structure that is continually depleted of its meaning and altered, are the sub-connotations that the paintings are concerned with.
The artist is not interested in striving to perfect the area he is working on, (in other words the structure he stands on) by putting together whatever he has at hand. In truth, he makes as much fun as he can of that sense of “completeness”. This position constitutes the aspect of satire in the paintings. Again in the artist’s own words, “ We can speak of perfectly functioning pictures or lamely functioning pictures… In some, the functioning is flawless; in reality, they deceive the viewer: by forcing life also to pursue perfect ideals in its reality … the painting which advances in fractures, does not propose the perfect in its multi-focal and broken state.”
We might add: Instead of “recommending”, it evolves into the disorderly fragment of functioning. Instead of sanctifying the technique, it makes it into a simple instrument of expression.

To sum up, he pictures together with all these sub-connotations, remain within the nature of the “snapshot” visual culture and by profiting extensively from this culture, they create a view. Much the same as the chaotic functioning of the spaces they reflect.

Antonio COSENTINO