A Slip of the Mind
Burcu Aksoy’s artistic practice is an effort to create a photographic language expressing the human mind’s continuously changing state and complexities. She borrows her methods from psychoanalysis and psychiatry to structure her quest as a journey destined to never end, and where answers are beyond reach. Her aim is not to draw any conclusions; her focus is on the process and its defining method.
Aksoy uses psychiatric terms to name her series and time slots to name each work. Symptomatic of an “obsession with control”, she subjects every step of the process to a precise set of rules; this does not mean she leaves no room for imagination, play or magic. To the contrary, this precisely delineated space is infinite and unlimited in itself. It is where the outer world’s viewing regimes have lost their validity, and the artist is free to destroy the ordinary forms of meaning-making. Familiar elements from the sensory universe continue to appear in it, yet their associations remain new for the viewer at each and throughout the entire duration of her encounter with the work. For the mind, the home of the unconscious, flows unstoppably for a lifetime; at best, moments of it can be photographed. Aksoy’s use of time codes in naming her images thus reinforces the feeling that they are the instantaneous pictures of the fluid mind.
In Parapraxis, Aksoy’s actions continue to remain within a predetermined framework. Considering she has produced only two photographic series on human body and to “understand why she avoids the figure”, the importance of the Seduction Theory series can be better understood. Here, Aksoy renounces her loyalty to the architectural and spatial elements; at the center of her ruleless frame she places the female nude, the “space” with the most perception and meaning imposed on it and often finding itself in controversial territories. The body is thus liberated from the outer world’s cultural references it is accustomed to mimic. Within the composition, it is devoid of the completeness and stability necessary to preserve those meanings. It is suspended in a void without any spatial references, and as if it may leave the frame at any moment. In any case, coming across the traces of the body in a universe ruled by psychoanalysis shall not be surprising, as the body or the “home of the mind” is also the temple of the suppressed desires.
This extraordinary change in direction does not prevent Aksoy from using the basic elements bringing coherence to her artistic practice, the most important of which is color. Red, the only color used in her previous series and always in the same tone, now takes the leading role with its various shades. As the wavelength with the lowest visually sensible frequency, it is a strong metaphor making the viewer feel at the edge of consciousness. It brings into mind the violently surfacing suppressed emotions; thus, it is therapeutic. Moreover, it makes the tension between the two series based on chaos and tranquility even more pronounced, simultaneously bringing the viewer to the two extremes of extraordinary mental states.
In spite of all their subjectivity, Aksoy’s images are also extremely familiar. Thanks to these patterns, the viewer’s unconscious begins to flow towards the artist’s without realizing it; their boundaries begin to dissolve; the viewer’s mind fills the image and makes it her own. This might be the closest she can get to the unexpressed, the always missing, the “truth”; it is as strong and traumatic as is nebulous and volatile. If it were not, we could not have kept searching for it; neither art could have existed, nor could life.
İpek Yeğinsü, 2021
PARAPRAXIS:
Memory errors, e.g. a wrong move, a blunder, a slip of tongue, or placing an object in the wrong place.
SEDUCTION THEORY:
As described in his article dated 1896, Freud’s Seduction Theory revolves around the phenomenon of ‘seduction’ in the etiology of hysteria. Here, he explores the correlation between childhood sexual trauma (mostly incest initiated by the father) and the emergence of hysteria later in life. Subsequently, he developed the ‘Oedipal complex’ theory as well.
Burcu Aksoy’s artistic practice is an effort to create a photographic language expressing the human mind’s continuously changing state and complexities. She borrows her methods from psychoanalysis and psychiatry to structure her quest as a journey destined to never end, and where answers are beyond reach. Her aim is not to draw any conclusions; her focus is on the process and its defining method.
Aksoy uses psychiatric terms to name her series and time slots to name each work. Symptomatic of an “obsession with control”, she subjects every step of the process to a precise set of rules; this does not mean she leaves no room for imagination, play or magic. To the contrary, this precisely delineated space is infinite and unlimited in itself. It is where the outer world’s viewing regimes have lost their validity, and the artist is free to destroy the ordinary forms of meaning-making. Familiar elements from the sensory universe continue to appear in it, yet their associations remain new for the viewer at each and throughout the entire duration of her encounter with the work. For the mind, the home of the unconscious, flows unstoppably for a lifetime; at best, moments of it can be photographed. Aksoy’s use of time codes in naming her images thus reinforces the feeling that they are the instantaneous pictures of the fluid mind.
In Parapraxis, Aksoy’s actions continue to remain within a predetermined framework. Considering she has produced only two photographic series on human body and to “understand why she avoids the figure”, the importance of the Seduction Theory series can be better understood. Here, Aksoy renounces her loyalty to the architectural and spatial elements; at the center of her ruleless frame she places the female nude, the “space” with the most perception and meaning imposed on it and often finding itself in controversial territories. The body is thus liberated from the outer world’s cultural references it is accustomed to mimic. Within the composition, it is devoid of the completeness and stability necessary to preserve those meanings. It is suspended in a void without any spatial references, and as if it may leave the frame at any moment. In any case, coming across the traces of the body in a universe ruled by psychoanalysis shall not be surprising, as the body or the “home of the mind” is also the temple of the suppressed desires.
This extraordinary change in direction does not prevent Aksoy from using the basic elements bringing coherence to her artistic practice, the most important of which is color. Red, the only color used in her previous series and always in the same tone, now takes the leading role with its various shades. As the wavelength with the lowest visually sensible frequency, it is a strong metaphor making the viewer feel at the edge of consciousness. It brings into mind the violently surfacing suppressed emotions; thus, it is therapeutic. Moreover, it makes the tension between the two series based on chaos and tranquility even more pronounced, simultaneously bringing the viewer to the two extremes of extraordinary mental states.
In spite of all their subjectivity, Aksoy’s images are also extremely familiar. Thanks to these patterns, the viewer’s unconscious begins to flow towards the artist’s without realizing it; their boundaries begin to dissolve; the viewer’s mind fills the image and makes it her own. This might be the closest she can get to the unexpressed, the always missing, the “truth”; it is as strong and traumatic as is nebulous and volatile. If it were not, we could not have kept searching for it; neither art could have existed, nor could life.
İpek Yeğinsü, 2021
PARAPRAXIS:
Memory errors, e.g. a wrong move, a blunder, a slip of tongue, or placing an object in the wrong place.
SEDUCTION THEORY:
As described in his article dated 1896, Freud’s Seduction Theory revolves around the phenomenon of ‘seduction’ in the etiology of hysteria. Here, he explores the correlation between childhood sexual trauma (mostly incest initiated by the father) and the emergence of hysteria later in life. Subsequently, he developed the ‘Oedipal complex’ theory as well.