Turan Aksoy, 1965

Born in 1965 in Erzincan, Turan Aksoy graduated from the Painting Department of Gazi University and went on to complete his master’s degree at Hacettepe University and his PhD at the University of Central England in the UK.

Aksoy explores themes familiar to our everyday lives, such as our consumerist culture, nature, violence, comfort and longing. He presents us with the subjects and concepts that preoccupy him using plain, visual references that are not overwhelmed by detail. The 2010 painting “Motif-Secretly Showing” belongs to a cycle of eight works called “Genre Painting or A Short History of my Memory Pertaining to Sexuality”. In this painting on canvas Aksoy depicts two figures in a green landscape. The figures, which could also be described as shadows and are of indeterminate sex, seem to be meditating in difficult positions. The titles of the other pieces in this cycle reference genre painting, for example: landscape, portrait, interior, still life, nude, and everyday life. The genre of this particular painting is “motif.” According to Aksoy, motifs make it possible to depict as embellishments elements that figure in art such as love, pain, and death