Series of etchings by Deniz Gül
“When I first met Derin, I told her about the scratching of words I had been doodling in my notebooks since a while. It all emerged during a phase when I felt exhausted by the speed and intensity of writing as an act. While continuing my writings, I found myself working with images where words transformed into landscapes or topographies on the page. Recognizing the compatibility of etching as a technique for this endeavor, with Derin we embarked on a journey. Scratching was a topic I worked on in my previous exhibition.[1]
While practicing these writings on zinc plates, Derin and I decided to experiment with different techniques. Combining drypoint, sugar lift, and hard ground etching, the first series emerged: "Ciliary flocking" and "Emergent instabilities"
The word "cilia," resembling eyelashes, refers to hair-like organelles that facilitate motor movement in organisms without a nervous system. Motile cilia move fluid past cells, while non-motile cilia transmit a variety of sensory stimuli, including chemical concentrations of hormones, odorants, and developmental morphogens, as well as light intensity and fluid flow.
Without entering a conceptual realm with words, following the movement of my hand and allowing the movement to organize itself resembled how cilia create movement. Thus, the initial works revolved around ideas of movement, emergence, agility, clustering, and organization.
The reason we chose to print in blue stems comes from my habit of taking notes with a ballpoint pen in notebooks. Particularly in "Ciliary flocking" the drypoint technique we applied as a second plate was scratched so deeply into the plexiglass that the result resembled a leaking, exploded fountain pen.
As I became more familiar with the material, I wanted to work on two more plates. The titles of this series are: “Line confined in narrative" and “Line exhausted by line”.
These works can be read within the context of my conceptual practice. In this process, where the action is etching and the visual output is image, I also wanted to work with reference images. It is a fact that I am not an artist who constructs narratives by following a design; rather, I have an approach that explores the limits of materials and I think in abstract terms. I have been researching what writing actually means. These two etchings show projections of the wearings out of concrete in time when concrete as "a patch” is applied to the road on cracks.“The patch” shines like writing on the road under the sunlight. The studies of unreadable texts is amongst my studies since Stone, Manuscirpts Don’t Burn (2015)[2]. Derin and I had lengthy discussions about the techniques to process these reference images. The reason I call them “reference" is that they remind me unreadable writing is everywhere, and I sought ease in naming these poetic images captured with a phone lens. I realized that mobilizing these reference images from a path of visual resemblance into a plane of scratching would excite me. I engaged in an intense act of etching. Instead of producing an image with harmonious lines that come together to create the illusion of a painting, I focused on lines completely exhausting each other, clashing within certain boundaries, overlapping in disharmonious shapes, and conveying the physical effort and the emotions driving me through the moment. In these prints, I made visible the idea of an image that emerges and becomes visible on the surface through etching, a concept I explored in two shows, Deniz Gül , Meydan[3] and Scratch and Surface. The lines met with the aesthetics of hair, feathers, and cilia from the previous series. Alternately, it became an experience that connected to works like Line[4], Flat[5] and Hashwords[6], which can be read within the context of my ongoing research into calligraphy, the art of giving beautiful shapes to letters.''
With deep gratitude to Derin,
Deniz Gül.
[1] “Scratch and Surface”, Deniz Gül, Salt Galata, 2021 https://saltonline.org/en/2323/scratch-and-surface-deniz-gul
[2]14th Istanbul Biennial, original wooden carved ceiling pieces are exhibited in an old Greek house. For more information: https://14b.iksv.org/works.asp?id=15
[3] Publication: https://www.yapikrediyayinlari.com.tr/deniz-gul-meydan.aspx
[4] https://denizgul.com/post/673907203199188992/line-2020-hollow-surface-plaster-grey-paint
[5] https://denizgul.com/post/674997208823791616/daire-düz-flat-2021-çimento-levha-üstüne-dizili