BY RAYNALD C RIVERA
DOHA: Leading Turkish artist İrfan Önürmen made his Middle East debut on Thursday opening his first solo exhibition at Katara Gallery as part of the pioneering International Artist in Residency Programme initiated by Katara Art Studios.
Önürmen is the first Turkish artist under the residency programme aimed at developing world class Qatari artists through exchanging ideas with important international artists.
“The aim is to develop Qatari artists’ ability to produce works of this calibre, exposing them to artists like Önürmen to exchange ideas and see the entire process from concept to production to exhibition,” explained Sa’id Costa, Curator of Visual Arts Exhibitions and Educational Programmes.
“This is a long process Katara is investing through the studios and exhibitions, but as we host more and more exhibitions like this, the more we develop the Qatari artists and the audience as well,” Costa stressed on the importance of the program.
Through the programme, Katara invites one new international artist or more monthly.
“The number of artists varies; it can be one or more depending on the project. In December we are inviting some of the most important artists, 25 of them in a big exhibition,” added Costa.
The entire preparation for Önürmen’s five-week long expo took eight months, but took him more than a week to do all the artworks in Katara.
“Some of the works have been started in Istanbul but were finished here under the residency program in which he had the opportunity to exchange ideas with Qatari artists,” said Costa, adding the works have been done specifically for the gallery and never been exhibited before anywhere.
For Önürmen the show is very important because this is the first time to have solo expo in the Middle East and “look at the world from this side.”
Titled ‘Disorder’, the exhibition reflects the artist’s view of the chaotic situation in the Middle East including Turkey using the mass media as inspiration. “My mission is to express how I feel about this geography, trying to find its order but still ending up in chaos. This also includes the expanding and changing cultures not finding their place,” he said.
He uses a unique medium in all eight works which is the tulle, a very fragile and semi-transparent material “and for me the fragility and sensitivity of my medium also shows the fragility of everything in this geography.”
The pieces were created through multi-layered compositions of abstract forms and figures from mass media contents, Islamic ornamental art and symbols from daily life.
The expo is open until October 27 at the Katara Gallery, Building 18. The Peninsula
