Yüksel Arslan: Artures - Tapa dura

Due to the political circumstances in Turkey, with the support of André Breton, Jean Dubuffet, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Yüksel Arslan (*1933 in Istanbul) emigrated to Paris in the early sixties, but he has remained unknown to a wider audience until now. This is the first publication to provide a comprehensive look at his work, including his various creative phases from 1959 onward. The artist’s numerous works on paper show the expressivity of his colors, through which he captures the oriental light, emphasizing it as a characteristic typical of the Near East, as did Eugène Delacroix. Arslan’s so-called Artures are owed to his unique style of painting: he does not use conventional paints, but pigments he mixes himself, plant extracts such as flowers or grass, and natural substances―oil, charcoal, and stone. They serve to create human and animal figures that are either responses to philosophical questions of Western thought or else rooted in his own biography. Exhibition schedule: Kunsthalle Zürich, January 28–April 9, 2012 | Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, April 21–June 24, 2012 | Kunsthalle Wien, January 18–March 13, 2013