ARTIST STATEMENT

Not knowing what to paint, I found myself sitting in front of a mirror staring at myself and wondering. It took me a while to get my paints and brushes out and start painting what I was staring at. After doing a series of self-portraits, I felt the need to get beyond my physical self. Instead of making the audience face a fact, I wanted them to read stories in my paintings. And it literally took me a lifetime to come up with those stories. I went straight back to my childhood after noticing that I would always be the child I was.

Having moved from the south of Turkey. Adana, where I was born, to Mollis, Switzerland, then back to Istanbul and finally to Paris; I believe adaptation has become a main character in my way of living. One adapting to an environment, feeling comfortable, at ease wherever it is the place that is called ‘home’, trying to recreate the same world of one’s own, carrying it in cardboard boxes and plastic bags to different countries. That I try to reflect through my paintings.

In the end, it was the very curious me that I ended up finding myself interested in; thinking and hoping that having an understanding of myself would help me build a bridge between that self and its surroundings –meaning anything and everything around me but myself-. It happens to be a concrete visible bridge considering that I do this through painting. I paint, and you look at what I have painted. But I am behind the painting; you are in front of it. There is a painting between us; that is the bridge.

Hale Gungor
Moment Monuments
April 2004