Art On Istanbul is presenting "Yüz Her Şeydir" (Every Face is Everything), an exhibition by Horasan, on view from October 8 to November 19, 2016. The exhibition features Horasan’s multi-fragmented compositions focused on the “face” as well as a 30-piece portrait installation selected from twenty years of his practice.
In the exhibition, which brings together Horasan’s works on paper and canvas, the artist develops a theme centered on the human face, exploring expressions that reveal emotional states. The combination of paper works and canvases creates a series of “narratives” in which facial expressions take the central role.
For Horasan, the starting point of painting has always been the pencil portraits he drew of people posing for him during his childhood—in other words, the face itself. By drawing faces, Horasan seeks to understand people more deeply. In his own words, “drawing a face is, in a way, defining the world.”
Horasan’s approach goes beyond conventional boundaries to examine the concept of the face, not merely as a depiction of characters and their expressions, but as a window both into himself and the viewer. Each of these faces, capturing distinct, unconventional, symbolic, and expressive features, does not refer directly to a specific figure. Highly imaginative, these works are simultaneously challenging to grasp and open to new and diverse readings. With this approach, Horasan focuses on portraying the emotional essence of faces rather than reproducing familiar or known forms.
The reference points for Horasan’s compositions are drawings he has made and reinterpreted over time in his sketchbooks. "Yüz Her Şeydir" also offers clues to the trajectory of his practice from the present into the future. In the exhibition, Horasan presents the familiar in a way that feels unfamiliar, making what initially seems incomprehensible become recognizable upon closer examination.
Horasan’s "Yüz Her Şeydir" will be on view at Art On Istanbul until Saturday, November 19.