OOO Of A Lucid terrain
2021



Paraffin, Stone coal imported from a 19th century Polish coal-mine, Mud, Watercolor, Fishhook, Fish thread etc.



The project reflects on the industrial extraction of fossil fuel and its inevitable catastrophic consequences, referencing a huge landslide, flash flood happened near to a gravel pit in western-Germany in July 2021. Casted Paraffin processed from crude oil that pumped and mined from the ground often leaves vacuum between the tectonic plates; stone coal- the core ingredient for the industrial revolution and anthropocentric idea of progress also extracted; - already exhausted the earth in many parts of the planet. While fragile wax boxes indicating the vulnerability of earth, double-sided watercolours show images intersecting moons and planets that effects the tide.


Furthermore, Anthropocentrism (a result of human-centric ontology) engaged us in a war between nature and human for providing the most to a minority of the entire life forms in the universe. The extraction of fossil fuel, exhausting earth and its impact on the transforming geographic terrains are a few of those disastrous outcomes of the Anthropocene. seemingly hidden and static, from closer observation, earth layers and minerals traverse from one place to another like the waves of velvet fabrics and alluvium silts respectively in a periodic timescape. Land breaths and it has a life of its own, we failed on that. Recent climate catastrophes show rapid changes of landscape and retreating of the glaciers that are not only a threat to the future of human life but also a huge number of other life forms on earth. A planned murder to mother nature and an exploding number of climate refugees in the global south called for urgency into the conundrum.


In this installation, I placed a modular wall of coloured, open-sided boxes cast in paraffin wax that sat on a field of coal. Entering the room, the light from the windows allowed this translucent structure to glow. This translucence was mirrored in a series of double-sided watercolour paintings hung away from the walls. Two walls in the room had been covered with mud; mud almost the same colour as the wooden floor, which dissolved the rooms ‘horizon line’. The fragile wax boxes complimented the heaviness of black stone coal. The coal, paraffin, and mud all relate to the industrial extraction of the earth’s resources, while the watercolour paintings show images relating to intersecting moons and planets. These celestial abstractions reference the powerful effects sun and moon have on the tides. While there was a strong sense of completeness, the work left the viewer room to unpack the subject matter and be immersed in the formal complexities of the piece.



Paraffin wax is a processed form of crude oil, pumped and mined from the ground, coal is also extracted from the earth's surface. These were the core ingredients for the industrial revolution and the human-centered idea of progress. But by the turn of the Millennia, we reached the epoch of the Anthropocene. Exhaustion of the earth's surface left us with no choice but to face climate catastrophes. So how the extraction of fossil fuel paved the way to landscape change, flux, transformation and how it impacts the different life forms in nature that were my thought of departure. Dealing with the material paraffin wax was similar to earth formation. how it melts, liquidates and again solidifies during the casting process resembles the stages the earth went through from its lava state to its current livable state.



A room is a given politics. Artists can decide whether they will work within this politics or they will alter it while situating their works into the room. Likewise, a landscape has a historicized, constructed and politicized truth (Myth). For moving beyond this ‘truth’ narrative essentially constructed by human perception, we have to explore reality with sheer proximity. ‘OOO’- Object-Oriented Ontology in recent years brought speculative realism to a stage where ‘overmining and undermining’ (Graham Harman, 2018) is not helpful anymore for decoding the reality of any given situation. How objects in the space and their qualities encounter, interact and perform between each other and generate a third space determines the reality of the objects. Furthermore, Anthropocentrism (a result of human-centric ontology) engaged us in a war between nature and being for providing the most to a minority of the entire life forms in the universe. The extraction of fossil fuel, exhausting earth and its impact on the transforming geographic terrains are a few of those disastrous outcomes of the Anthropocene. Although seemingly hidden and static, from closer observation earth layers and minerals traverse from one place to another like the waves of velvet fabrics and alluvium silts respectively in a periodic timescape. Land breaths and it has a life of its own, we failed on that. Recent climate catastrophes show rapid changes of landscape and retreating of the glaciers that are not only a threat to the future of human life but also a huge number of other life forms on earth. A planned murder to mother nature and an exploding number of climate refugees in the global south called for urgency into the conundrum.



At the beginning of the 21st century, we came to realize that human driven technological progress does not follow the rhythm of nature and became a weapon against it. Covid-19 Pandemic all over the world proved again that we are unable to control what nature has to say. During the lockdown, I started creating these small watercolor series mostly sitting on my kitchen table to calm myself down, to neutralize this angst in, very meditative and sensible way. Tried not to think much but employ me into the moment, the white lines that I kept in most of the paintings were a little disruption kept me inside the image, to handle it with more patience, care and presence with the flow of the material, to listen to the medium while doing it.



Some sense of lunar eclipse or seeing the earth from outer spaces, or at times when different planets come to a parallel of the equator, it impacts on each other, like when sun, moon and earth come together high tide or flood happens. Staying in a similar poetic undertone I introduced recent environmental catastrophes, like the Turkish/ amazon wildfire or huge land crush in south Germany due to the heavy rainfall in the painting to remind again that something beyond human control exists in nature. Interestingly I only have used kitchen utensils like plates or long spoons to create those lines and circles. That it does not interrupt my meditative process.



Framing the painting, I tried to follow the sensibility of the watercolor that the frame does not disrupt the images in some way, fish hooks and waxed fishing threads were used to connect them alter the conventional hanging and introduce a more natural living, and questioning the industrial food processing and fishing. Likewise, clay walls on one hand indicate the organic and friendly ways to deal with nature and coexisting with it, on the other hand, nature-based future architectural proposals could be read into it. I was interested to see how this transform the room and interact with other materials in this project.