YUŞA YALÇINTAŞ
cocoon
PILEVNELI | YALIKAVAK
It all starts with their free seeing, interpreting and coding the world. As they create their own worlds, they also play subtle games with reality. With their questioning gaze and their efforts to explore their surroundings, children know how to live by walking on a thin line between the infinite universe they have created and the restrictive realities; until they become adults and have to destroy the world they have built with their own hands.
The Stage of Timeless, Spaceless, Nameless Children
In Yuşa Yalçıntaş's works, we see children who look alike, sometimes in familiar, sometimes in completely undefined spaces and mostly in symmetrical compositions. Perceptions such as identity and time are left out of the equation in the works, which on the one hand seem far from perspective, proportion and realism, and on the other hand are characterized by a mystical architecture adorned with geometric and symbolic details. The symbolism of the paintings, the different forms of architectural structures and the symmetry of the figures bring together Shamanism, Japanese and Far Eastern cultures with Turkish miniatures and Jewish mysticism, while opening sensitive spaces for the artist's own memories and childhood stories. As this multicultural visual language accompanies his journey into the past and conveys to the viewer the nuances of how he approaches issues such as home/shelter, rules/social norms, school life/studenthood, the language of architecture/nostalgia for nature. The expressionless-faced "prototype" children we encounter in these theatre scenes appear as if they are enacting a ritual in a performance with their rhythmic movements that follow the rules of the games they play or the school structure. Realizing that children's games are a metaphor for all human behaviour, Yuşa incorporates the child's gaze into his works in an effort to understand beliefs, behaviour and society. It is precisely from this point of view that the ideas he has developed for his new exhibition "cocoon" create an inclusive field of questioning about today's concept of home and shelter.
Inside the Cocoon, Outside the World
Going back to our childhood; what did home mean to us? Far away from the times when adults made endless efforts to maintain, organize, and meet our needs, it was perhaps a cocoon limited to games, family, objects and the emotions they brought. Yuşa looks at life from this time when we lived without knowing how a house was maintained, protected and sustained. The cocoon, the sheltered structure in which caterpillars stay for a while before turning into butterflies, is a delicate and impressive metaphor for our home at that time, a shelter like the mother's womb, and because of its fragile and subtle structure, a delicate and impressive metaphor for the problems and contradictions regarding the concept of home today. From the child's point of view, while the house continues its imaginary existence as a living organism, unfortunately it breaks away from its pure roots by the reality of today and the geography we live in including the bare facts such as earthquake disasters, property lust, construction enthusiasm, economic crisis, rent relations, rent problems, nomadism and refugeeism.
The Irony of Cookie Shelter and Edible Tokens
As he has freed himself a little more compared to his past works, seeking a way to paint impulsively as in his childhood, Yuşa’s works in the exhibition are actually fictionalized around a single drawing: "Cookie Shelter". The painting, which inevitably reminds us of the sugar house in Hansel and Gretel's fairy tale when we hear its name, immediately makes us feel the presence of a creepy irony just as this fairy tale is actually based on the difficulties of the Middle Ages, when children were left alone in a forest by their families due to hunger and war. Referring to the way we see our home as a self-sustaining organism in our childhood, the artist reflects a playful staging of the relationship between money and food (resource and nutrition) thanks to the cookie-coin object that falls from the roof into the house, referring on the one hand to the children who have to work instead of playing in today's economic conditions, contributing to the breadwinner, and on the other hand to the system that "cannot feed" them. The artist depicts different scenes based on this painting, and his work "Burnt School" shows children leaving a burning school with a kind of ceremony and celebration, lying on the grass and playing. The fact that Yuşa studied at a boarding school for a long time, which turned his home into a school and his school into a home, has also been very effective in his handling of school-related themes. In fact, the improvised games they played on the theatre stage in the dining hall after the April 23rd (National Sovereignty and Children's Day) ceremonies when the teachers were not present, the fact that he saw the boarding school's garden as his home garden and the anecdotes he quotes from school books, directly influence the ceremony, theatre and ritual scenes in his drawings. In "Shadow Play", on the other hand, children’s bodies are completely indistinct, floating like ghosts, appear in their most uncertain and most suitable states to be shaped and raised. This work, thus, emphasizes that children are formed according to the home/the family they are born into. It is also possible for those figures to gradually become clearer, more colourful, and lively, but also possible for them to fade away as shadows and disappear into the sky and earth.
Child Busts, Pedestalled Elements: The Pure State of Civilization
In addition to the paintings, the exhibition also includes four bronze sculptures/busts. Considering the place of busts, which have become symbols of ideological and social discourses in the construction of national feelings and the development of cultural identity from the school period onwards, what do children busts mean to us? Embodying irony as well as seriousness and sadness, each of these four busts symbolizes one of the four elements in nature. Fire, water, air and earth represent the nature to which we belong, which is part of us - the purest form of our home - while perhaps mocking our overbuilt, twisted, played with, decorated living spaces on the other hand. Escaping from the universe of objects and returning to nature and the world of matter, complementing and looking at each other, these busts evoke Yuşa an unreal civilization where only children, representing the purest elements, are present and thus the only decision-making mechanism consists of them.
It all starts with their free seeing, interpreting and coding the world. As they create their own worlds, they also play subtle games with reality. With their questioning gaze and their efforts to explore their surroundings, children know how to live by walking on a thin line between the infinite universe they have created and the restrictive realities; until they become adults and have to destroy the world they have built with their own hands.
The Stage of Timeless, Spaceless, Nameless Children
In Yuşa Yalçıntaş's works, we see children who look alike, sometimes in familiar, sometimes in completely undefined spaces and mostly in symmetrical compositions. Perceptions such as identity and time are left out of the equation in the works, which on the one hand seem far from perspective, proportion and realism, and on the other hand are characterized by a mystical architecture adorned with geometric and symbolic details. The symbolism of the paintings, the different forms of architectural structures and the symmetry of the figures bring together Shamanism, Japanese and Far Eastern cultures with Turkish miniatures and Jewish mysticism, while opening sensitive spaces for the artist's own memories and childhood stories. As this multicultural visual language accompanies his journey into the past and conveys to the viewer the nuances of how he approaches issues such as home/shelter, rules/social norms, school life/studenthood, the language of architecture/nostalgia for nature. The expressionless-faced "prototype" children we encounter in these theatre scenes appear as if they are enacting a ritual in a performance with their rhythmic movements that follow the rules of the games they play or the school structure. Realizing that children's games are a metaphor for all human behaviour, Yuşa incorporates the child's gaze into his works in an effort to understand beliefs, behaviour and society. It is precisely from this point of view that the ideas he has developed for his new exhibition "cocoon" create an inclusive field of questioning about today's concept of home and shelter.
Inside the Cocoon, Outside the World
Going back to our childhood; what did home mean to us? Far away from the times when adults made endless efforts to maintain, organize, and meet our needs, it was perhaps a cocoon limited to games, family, objects and the emotions they brought. Yuşa looks at life from this time when we lived without knowing how a house was maintained, protected and sustained. The cocoon, the sheltered structure in which caterpillars stay for a while before turning into butterflies, is a delicate and impressive metaphor for our home at that time, a shelter like the mother's womb, and because of its fragile and subtle structure, a delicate and impressive metaphor for the problems and contradictions regarding the concept of home today. From the child's point of view, while the house continues its imaginary existence as a living organism, unfortunately it breaks away from its pure roots by the reality of today and the geography we live in including the bare facts such as earthquake disasters, property lust, construction enthusiasm, economic crisis, rent relations, rent problems, nomadism and refugeeism.
The Irony of Cookie Shelter and Edible Tokens
As he has freed himself a little more compared to his past works, seeking a way to paint impulsively as in his childhood, Yuşa’s works in the exhibition are actually fictionalized around a single drawing: "Cookie Shelter". The painting, which inevitably reminds us of the sugar house in Hansel and Gretel's fairy tale when we hear its name, immediately makes us feel the presence of a creepy irony just as this fairy tale is actually based on the difficulties of the Middle Ages, when children were left alone in a forest by their families due to hunger and war. Referring to the way we see our home as a self-sustaining organism in our childhood, the artist reflects a playful staging of the relationship between money and food (resource and nutrition) thanks to the cookie-coin object that falls from the roof into the house, referring on the one hand to the children who have to work instead of playing in today's economic conditions, contributing to the breadwinner, and on the other hand to the system that "cannot feed" them. The artist depicts different scenes based on this painting, and his work "Burnt School" shows children leaving a burning school with a kind of ceremony and celebration, lying on the grass and playing. The fact that Yuşa studied at a boarding school for a long time, which turned his home into a school and his school into a home, has also been very effective in his handling of school-related themes. In fact, the improvised games they played on the theatre stage in the dining hall after the April 23rd (National Sovereignty and Children's Day) ceremonies when the teachers were not present, the fact that he saw the boarding school's garden as his home garden and the anecdotes he quotes from school books, directly influence the ceremony, theatre and ritual scenes in his drawings. In "Shadow Play", on the other hand, children’s bodies are completely indistinct, floating like ghosts, appear in their most uncertain and most suitable states to be shaped and raised. This work, thus, emphasizes that children are formed according to the home/the family they are born into. It is also possible for those figures to gradually become clearer, more colourful, and lively, but also possible for them to fade away as shadows and disappear into the sky and earth.
Child Busts, Pedestalled Elements: The Pure State of Civilization
In addition to the paintings, the exhibition also includes four bronze sculptures/busts. Considering the place of busts, which have become symbols of ideological and social discourses in the construction of national feelings and the development of cultural identity from the school period onwards, what do children busts mean to us? Embodying irony as well as seriousness and sadness, each of these four busts symbolizes one of the four elements in nature. Fire, water, air and earth represent the nature to which we belong, which is part of us - the purest form of our home - while perhaps mocking our overbuilt, twisted, played with, decorated living spaces on the other hand. Escaping from the universe of objects and returning to nature and the world of matter, complementing and looking at each other, these busts evoke Yuşa an unreal civilization where only children, representing the purest elements, are present and thus the only decision-making mechanism consists of them.
Hence, from the child's point of view, a kind of alternative civilization is created and the house becomes a free playground, purified from the pressure of rules and norms, letting itself surrender to the possibilities of nature.
Protecting themselves from the harsh, unpredictable reality of the outside world, the children lock the door of their so-called gingerbread house in the playing house created by the artist; until they become adults and have to destroy the world they have built with their own hands.
