Notorious

Mehmet Güleryüz studied at the Saint Benoit French lycée and graduated first in his class from the İstanbul State Academy of Fine Arts in 1966. In 1970 he went to study in Paris on a government scholarship and he remained there until 1975. Mehmet Güleryüz’s passionate response to the transient and ghostly quality of an image as it emerges and fades before our eyes characterizes his approach to art. Sustained by his critical and expressionist vision of the world, his canvases depict human circumstances and experiences. In his earlier works, existentialist concerns ruled over figures that materialized in an indeterminate sphere. Liberated from any sense of time, space and gender, these figures begin to acquire identities over time, turning into representatives of their era. Also known for his socio-critical paintings, Güleryüz has always adhered to the notion that pictorial information forms an intangible intellectual layer within reality. He is interested in family ties, relationships between men and women, the environment and all living things, as well as every instant that visually or verbally affects our current existence. Usually concentrating on a single moment, he intends to show multiple forms of relationships inherent in a single instance. As a result, his figures retain their movement even when standing still; the whirlpool of all the relationships that create their existence wrap all around them and impart mobility. Güleryüz keeps track of the moments in which we expose ourselves, at times with a sense of performance and at others with a disturbing remoteness. He therefore tackles both the worlds of individuals who clamor for attention and those who withdraw deep into silence. For Güleryüz, traveling along these extreme poles of human experiences is the easiest way to understand people.