Art Exhibition at the V.Ismet Güney Art Centre in Nicosia

By Heidi Trautmann

Contradiction in the title? No. You only have to get closer to discover the actual importance of the works, letting the impressions sink to the fundus of your eyes. I have opened the file of photos I took on the evening of the opening, leafing through them while I write this, and sit and reflect on what I want so say, I try to recall the initial impact on me.

They are both very fine artists and deliver work with a lot of hind thoughts to cause something in the viewer’s mind and stomach, reactions, responses that are not visual but intellectual; the works don’t want to please, they want to make us think.

Both the artists opened the exhibition together, many friends of theirs had come, artists and poets alike, no politicians, a different crowd altogether. The Ismet Güney Art Centre is a beautiful place for exhibitions with its stone walls and spacious halls and gave a perfect frame for the common theme of both artists.

Senih Çavuşoğlu was born in Paphos in 1969; he completed his MA degree in 1962 and his PhD in 1996 at Hacettepe University/Ankara, Faculty of Fine Arts, Dept. of Graphic Design. He now works as the Chair of the Dept. of Visual Arts and Design at Eastern Mediterranean University. He has been given many international awards and mentions for his graphic design, short films and for his photography art.

In the current exhibition Senih Çavuşoğlu has used material he found, scrap metal, rusty leftovers of tins, wire, and has connected them with miniscule human forms in positions of daily exercises; there is a lot of irony hidden in these small installations behind glass: the human beings living on the waste of society, whatever we do to our world, we humans are surviving, joyously. In the opening of the lid of a rusty canister, a video clip was flashing the word PAX (Peace).

Ümit İnatçı was born in 1960 in Limassol and was one of the important students of late Ali Atakan who was known for his involvement and furthering of talented art students. In 1978, he went to London for his higher education in arts, and he continued his studies in Perugia in Italy at the Pietro Vanucci Academy of Fine Arts from where he graduated in 1984 with distinction. The artist won many awards and praises for his painting, photography and graphic design works and participated in many exhibitions worldwide.

On his art exhibition in 2013 at the Atatürk Cultural Centre I wrote the following – and as my words are still valid in the basic meaning for the current one – I repeat them here: ‘Ümit İnatçı researches his projects to the smallest details philosophically and uses pictograms and logoforms to transpose the ‘findings’ onto canvas as the ‘cavemen’ did to record events for memory and communication purposes. Through the centuries man continued to use the form of symbols in different ways until today.  The involvement with the graphic image of symbols, lines writings on well balanced backgrounds has been Ümit İnatçı’s philosophy in his works ever since, works with an immediate influence on the viewer as having in front of him the essence of thought and existence.’

There was an atmosphere of cave existence, with witchcraft and voodoo ceremonies reigning in Ümit Inatci’s space of exhibition. The centre pieces were an installation of wood logs with some symbols of human existence encased in-between as if being crushed, and a carpet of basic wool material like felt laid out in patterns filled with symbols  - I thought bones were missing – and there was an installation of archaic wool making complete with the sheep’s skin and horns. Very impressive.  Some of the guests I saw standing around or in front of the works completely absorbed in thoughts, with others I spoke and they told me of their impressions.

Oya Akın and her kids sat undisturbed in one corner of Ümit’s space drawing their impressions, obviously.

At the end, visitors grouped together and photographed each other, some did ‘selfies’, perhaps to prove on facebook ‘I was here’.