The Universe of Myths

3 – 27 August 2019
The Universe of Myths
Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien, Vienna
Represented by Galerie Michael Schultz
Curated by Ulrich Ptak

Mystery of Clowns
2019
Oil on Canvas
180 x 240 cm

Secret Behind the Mask
2014
Oil on Canvas
100 x 100 cm

Resurrection
2018
Mixed Media
150 x 150 x 20 cm

Exhibition statement by Ulrich Ptak—Güneştekin’s artistic work is closely associated with the history of his country. At a period, there is much talk about globalization, and the exhibitions revolve around culture and the future, his works primarily stay in the present and look back from there. The origin of his artistic practice is the religions and myths which reflect unorthodoxly in his works. In this respect, he is not involved in developing a narrative construction but creating a visual world that does exhibit a form of spirituality yet remains an abstraction. His painting titles leave no doubt that this concerns a recourse to a time that seems far removed today and to cultures that arose through grand narratives and distinguished themselves through their proliferation. The Epic of Gilgamesh, for instance, was widely received up to the time of the Bible.

Güneştekin repeatedly expresses that mythologies are both representations of the present as they are of the past. He accounts that of its nature, the past becomes the present because memory needs a here and now. The artist has repeatedly explored, in his videos, social and psychological processes that shape collective memory. He assumes that mythologies are not merely the invented stories but rather fantastical reflections of real events. In the cultural universe of the Yazidis, whom he inspired immensely, all lore and traditions passed on by word of mouth, which strengthens them through the personal storytelling styles. His paintings are vigorous geometric constructions interwoven with flowing and winding lineatures. Legends, such as Lilith, Pegasus, Achilles, Phoenix and Medusa, appear in the abstractions and dramatizations. Snakes play a role in them, too, as do the number seven and the doors to immortality. Two elements, however, are central: The sun and the Peacock Angel. The Yazidi culture is centrally associated with sun worship and the figure of the Peacock Angel. With the sun being the signum of his artistic oeuvre.

In his work, stories and myths are superimposed in a nearly postmodern way so that diverse cultural views are linked together. His credo is to grant an understanding to all cultures and treat them equally, with the sun as a collective value for warmth, light and life, together with the condemnation of ideologies, extremism, fanaticism and dogmas. In his more recent works, this political emphasis rendered even more space. Never There is an assemblage and indicative of a new creative phase. The work refers to pogroms and expulsions, yet it is not some eye-catching depiction of atrocity but rather a profound philosophical reflection. (Site of memory) His artistic practice specifies his dialectical approach. And his creative production cannot be appraised enough as a humanist manifesto.

The Universe of Myths, sponsored by DAAX Corporation, brings together the artist’s autarkic sculptures as altars of remembrance which radiate sublimity and eternity, his paintings those are potent geometric constructions interwoven with flowing and winding lineatures, and the fabric works with singular elegance exploring the nature of mythologies.