At my early stages of my artistic development, I aimed to experiment with materials and processes while reflecting on my artistic growth focusing on the process as a dialogue between the maker and materials.
From the beginning, abstraction was my dominant way to convey. My early artworks were only the depiction of the technique itself with some design and art elements. While acquiring the technique to represent concepts took me a while to develop. Some of these technical developments fell under minimal and simple abstraction by only sequencing fragments in a linear manner or by lines crossing each other or branching out to edges. This focus on the aesthetics, like design elements and some principles, like symmetry, repetition, color impact and harmony, contrast and movement gave me a kind of direction, yet to not be fully defined and understood in terms of the artistic and intellectual development. The artistic process that is not aiming the visual realism as the end result, but rather considering it as a journey has more potential to create compelling and convincing images. I enjoyed this process.
I have always admired the simplicity of form and her fascination with geometry, brevity of line and muted color palettes of Agnes Martin, a pioneer in abstract painting. Interpreting this into mosaic did not produce the same aesthetic feel, due to the nature of the material’s physicality . Yet, I thought I took one step forward to some level of meaning, context and purpose. Her silence spoke to me. Yet, I was still drawn to dualities like ancient versus modern, simplicity versus chaos, order versus disorder, conversation/preservation versus destruction. I also started reading about Cy Twombly. His complicated language combined with his interest in the Greek and Roman civilizations and mythology and how he used poetry, philosophy and literature within his artwork opened my eyes into something new.
Bringing ancient and modern together was my occupation from the start. Finally, I did get an angle in terms of movement, tactility and interactivity as the common elements between the two periods. Understanding both past and present to find a new set of reference to resonate became my new intent for the visual experience. Mosaic was more than a technique, but also a model of communication. Mosaic lived a long life due to the durable materials, but also by restoring the missing tesserae pieces to make mosaic an ongoing work for the coming generations. Ancient mosaics were also not only visual, but a multiplicity existed in terms of tactility and sensations. Activating perceptions by creating movement, a dynamic design also meant viewer’s participation.
Recently, a Relational aesthetics artist Liam Gillick’s dynamic contradiction and refusal viewpoints and contemporary artists Anne and Patrick Poirier ‘s metaphorical build ups of the archeological shapes and forms to evoke viewer’s memories are some of the ideas that keeps my mind busy for the next search of meaning to compose interactions among colors, forms and materials.