Olgu Ülkenciler’s sixth solo exhibition, “Menevis”, can be seen at Art On Istanbul between March 23 – April 22, 2021.
The word “Meneviş”, which gives the exhibition its name, means “color fluctuations and a glow on a surface created by light” also in Persian the word carries the meaning “moire”. In this exhibition, in which the artist problematizes the surface of the painting with motion based around this word, she presents together the innovation and change that she researches on the surface with the effort to understand the times we are passing through without romanticizing it.
Olgu Ülkenciler, once again reiterates her belief in human beings and places this belief in the entirety of the exhibition in a time where human beings are diminished in all forms of future fictions. The artis who believes that what makes life livable for ordinary people is a glow that appears with the glimmer of hope, the word “meneviş” symbolizes such hope amongst the public and in literature.
The artist, who establishes her work discipline from whole to part, determines the painting effect that she wants to achieve in the whole of the exhibition as the patches read under a flat surface. Each painting that constitutes the exhibition emerges as units that share a common surface. In this series, the artist eliminates the brush as a material, creates layers on the surface with spray paint and modeling paste to determine the boundaries of the stain. When the absence of the brush eliminates the brush strokes and the value created by the way of applying, the layers seen in the previous paintings unite on a single surface. Each unit that makes up the exhibition shares this surface and the common hope at the center of the exhibition.
With “meneviş”, which Olgu Ülkenciler “once again and without exhaustion says mankind”, she brings forth mankind as the glow on earth while defending the right to live humanely.