Taner Ceylan, 1967

Taner Ceylan studied painting at Mimar Sinan University. He is widely regarded as one of the most remarkable practitioners of the photorealistic style.

Taner Ceylan conveys the features and milieu of gay life and culture on his canvas, and regards realism not only as a technical approach, but also as an expression, even accentuation of the reality of meaning: “What I expect of a painting is that it should give me as much reality as possible; it should give me the reality of beauty, my own reality. It should be real not just visibly but meaningfully too. Everything has its own energy… I want to create work that conveys the highest energy possible. I want its appearance to be strong.”

Ceylan’s painting “Alp on a White Background” captures a moment full of uncertainty when the depicted figure is turning his or her head—that instant when time slows as the figure starts to face forward. The depiction of such a moment, usually seen in out-of-focus photographs, turns the figure into a metaphor. In his thoroughly detailed and meticulously painted work, Ceylan renders the paint almost invisible. This is why the painting seems to be in conflict with the hyperrealist technique at first sight. The work emphasizes how what’s visible is not always the only truth and invites us to look closely in order to clarify, or leave open, the ambiguousness.