In his works, where he brings his storyteller and grotesque narrative together, Terliksiz is trying to make a connection between the nature and mind by taking daily occurrences as his starting point. In his exhibition, besides the alternative forms of the human figure, the animal figures that stand out with their storylike evocations and representations of primitive emotions grab one's attention. The viewers, on the other hand, create their own fictions by being integrated into a depicted story in each scene.
The paintings of Erkut Terliksiz, which remind of stories, dreams, and even cartoons, look naïve and childlike at first sight. We come across many surreal characters such as Forest jinn, the giraffe hunter, and the child whose nose fell onto the plate. As we keep looking at some figures, we notice a second face; and some figures are wrapped up with silhouettes that emerge nebulously in details. Yet, when we pay attention to what is going on, we realize that the world we are in is not as innocent as we assume, actually. These magical scenes, which swallow us with a welcoming manner at the beginning just like stories do, are made up of our emotions and fears that we try to break away from. Unlike many stories that we have heard by this time, they do not always have a happy ending. As a matter of fact, most of the stories that we had been told in our childhood, had been told us after being altered in order to hide the violence in them. We, on the other hand, had believed in fake endings and savers.
For instance, in the original version of the story, a lumberjack does not save Red Riding Hood and her grandmother; instead, the wolf makes the girl eat the grandmother. Since this brutal and weird ending is obviously not suitable for either kids or adults, it had been hidden and altered. In the narratives of Erkut Terliksiz, we perceive to the extent that we want to see; just as we reconstruct the stories the way we want to hear them. While we assume that we step out of the real, we find ourselves exactly in the middle of it.
The experimental use of materials that Terliksiz has focused on recently and his figures that are gradually becoming abstract are much more dominant in this exhibition. All of the materials that you will see in "Hunger" are comprised of the pieces of abandoned furniture, ripped canvases, wood, and cardboards and papers that the artist had collected from streets. Just like his stories, the materials that Erkut Terliksiz uses often emerge in almost their original forms, which are far away from the artificial perfection that we are often presented with.
"Hunger" will be on view at x-ist until April 26.
ERKUT TERLİKSİZ | Hunger from x-ist on Vimeo.