Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul
I have borrowed the title for the theme of this exhibition from the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. Abdurrahman Öztoprak (*1927 Istanbul, lives in Akyaka) is one of Turkey’s leading contemporary artist of international stature. His works are represented in the permanent collections of major museums and private collections in Turkey. As a painter, Abdurrahman Öztoprak himself, like Bachelard, visualizes in a similar way the poetic character of a location. The basic aim of this exhibition is to display, in a way not attempted before, works of Modern Turkish Art with those which were produced by Öztoprak at more or less the same time as the works of the other European artists of the same period, so as to open up a way to “read” them from a different angle. In the period between 1950 and 1970 Absract Art gained a special universality as interpreted through a different relationship of cause and effect by young artists throughout the world. In Turkey there were other representatives of this trend in Art besides Öztoprak.
