Click to download "Testimony", the publication for Metin Ünsal's exhibition
On Metin Ünsal's Art
In spite of its growing technical variety, Metin Ünsal’s art manifests a strong unity of language. In his journey beginning with painting, the forms migrating into the third dimension and the digital environment continue to surround our perception and communicate with us via various channels in all types of media. This characteristic seldom found in the artists of his generation carries his image of the woman-spirit gradually sublimated over the years to a universal and timeless plane. The unity of language among his works from different time periods is also the most important indication of his persistence and determination in this struggle.
Although Ünsal’s central argument remains constant throughout the process, it evolves, develops and expands at every step of the way. This is why each exhibition underlines a different concept; as these come one after another, they continue to build the artist’s essential statement and to expand it even further. While the first exhibition “Damage” points at the layers of pain accumulating on the women-spirits since their birth, the second exhibition “Price” focuses on the alienation these saddened spirits experience as a result of the damage assumed.
We generally see Ünsal’s women-spirits floating in the void, for their egos shaken by the damage they have assumed and the price they have paid deprive them of a soild ground they can stand on. Finally, the third exhibition “In the Void” takes its name from their lost nature devoid of identity and support. Yet, all these negative observations do not mean despair. To the contrary, Ünsal’s biggest motivation lies in his unshakable belief in the possibility of rational action able to change the current situation. The hologram created in collaboration with Uğur Engin Deniz renders the women-spirits’ internal motion visible. As another element we encounter for the first time, the sculpted spirits attached onto paintings present to us the fragments of their own life journey. These are partly abstract and unclear and partly legible, but all are symptomatic of their willingness to offer us a witness account of what they go through and to express themselves. That moment when the void finds expression is also the moment when inertia gradually leaves its place to motion. Will the women-spirits be able to reunite with their lost selves? Ünsal’s art continues to search for an answer to this very question.
İpek Yeğinsü, 2022
In spite of its growing technical variety, Metin Ünsal’s art manifests a strong unity of language. In his journey beginning with painting, the forms migrating into the third dimension and the digital environment continue to surround our perception and communicate with us via various channels in all types of media. This characteristic seldom found in the artists of his generation carries his image of the woman-spirit gradually sublimated over the years to a universal and timeless plane. The unity of language among his works from different time periods is also the most important indication of his persistence and determination in this struggle.
Although Ünsal’s central argument remains constant throughout the process, it evolves, develops and expands at every step of the way. This is why each exhibition underlines a different concept; as these come one after another, they continue to build the artist’s essential statement and to expand it even further. While the first exhibition “Damage” points at the layers of pain accumulating on the women-spirits since their birth, the second exhibition “Price” focuses on the alienation these saddened spirits experience as a result of the damage assumed.
We generally see Ünsal’s women-spirits floating in the void, for their egos shaken by the damage they have assumed and the price they have paid deprive them of a soild ground they can stand on. Finally, the third exhibition “In the Void” takes its name from their lost nature devoid of identity and support. Yet, all these negative observations do not mean despair. To the contrary, Ünsal’s biggest motivation lies in his unshakable belief in the possibility of rational action able to change the current situation. The hologram created in collaboration with Uğur Engin Deniz renders the women-spirits’ internal motion visible. As another element we encounter for the first time, the sculpted spirits attached onto paintings present to us the fragments of their own life journey. These are partly abstract and unclear and partly legible, but all are symptomatic of their willingness to offer us a witness account of what they go through and to express themselves. That moment when the void finds expression is also the moment when inertia gradually leaves its place to motion. Will the women-spirits be able to reunite with their lost selves? Ünsal’s art continues to search for an answer to this very question.
İpek Yeğinsü, 2022