By Heidi Trautmann

I wanted to see the exhibition which was announced only via Facebook by Fatoş Miralay, thanks to you,  Fatoş! Many other artists have not heard of this event and had not received any invitation! Whose fault it was, we don’t know. I had copied Fatoş’ text from Facebook and placed it on my website.

Anyway, I thought it is an important exhibition, “the art teachers at the NEU university”, for us to see what and how they teach, to learn what their motivation is and what their own art work is like.

I had learnt that the exhibition would be open for a week during the office hours, that is from 10 am to 4 pm; I arrived at 11.20 on Monday; the place was locked, a receptionist was not to be found; I went around the place and finally after ten minutes of search I found somebody to open the doors for me.

Since I am under some frustration from the very beginning, I have to report that many works had fallen down from the walls, nobody had cared to hang them back. There was no information material, nothing!

I brought home some photos for my readers to see. OK, there were some very good photographs, but these are photos I have seen in other exhibitions and competitions, nothing very new. There was one only art work from the Ceramic Department and some few graphic works, posters. At the students’ exhibition at the end of last term, in the same place and some months ago, I have seen better works, sorry, better organized and better presented.

The works I liked best were by Mustafa Hastürk, a new very good painting and two of his last exhibition, four photos by Hikmet Uluçam, presenting old olive trees with parts of female bodies incorporated, very good, and two paintings by Fatoş Miralay; and quite interesting were four wood or lino cuts; and not to forget the jewelery by Evrim Ergün, real good.

The exhibition has not impressed me at all as a whole; have the organisers really thought it would impress the students? What was the purpose of this exhibition? It is not the first time that I find the exhibitions at NEU being rather neglected, it gives the impression that nobody really cares, which is a great pity; the venue is really good and it could be used for many important events with a proper organization and interest from inside.

These were the artists/art teachers announced:

Mustafa Salim Aktuğ, Uğurcan Akyüz, Canan Atalay, Erdal Aygenç, Bahar Çıralı, Mehmet Naci Dedeal, Raif Dimililer, Refa Emrali, Erdoğan Ergün, Evrim Ergün, İsmail Gökçe, Mustafa Hastürk, Derin Şirvan Işıkören, Fatoş Miralay, Gökhan Okur, Hüseyin Özçelik, Nazan Sönmez, Hikmet Uluçam ve Yücel Yazgın.