Produced in 2008 and 2009, the artist's new collection, itself titled “Don Quixote on the Beach,” features 17 oil-on-canvas and acrylic pieces highlighting yellow and pink colors together with spherical forms. Hatapkapulu, a graduate of the Vienna Fine Arts Academy, is known for exploring her own anatomy in her work. She began to paint when she was nearing the end of high school and attended design classes taught by prominent Turkish painter Mehmet Güleryüz, hoping to be accepted by a fine arts school in Turkey. After being accepted by İstanbul's Mimar Sinan University, she showed her later work to Güleryüz, and he asked her why she was still making the same designs. This question greatly upset her, and as a result, she decided to change her artistic path. “In order to put an end to my situation, I went to Vienna and started all over again,” she says in an interview with Today's Zaman.
“Even if I was just a student, they always treated me as though I was already a painter,” Hatapkapulu says, explaining her experiences in Vienna. “I told them what I was trying to do through my paintings. We had very different seminar classes. I learned how to think there and how to transform my emotions into thoughts. It was very enjoyable and met my needs,” she notes, adding that she was taught by important artists such as Maria Lassnig and Christian Ludwig Attersee.
Asked whether she draws inspiration from Lassnig in using her own body as a subject in her work, Hatapkapulu explains that she did not learn this from her professor. “Perhaps she felt similarities and shared qualities between our paintings and that is why she invited me to her workshop. I learned many things from her, but I began to paint my own body at the end of high school,” she says, emphasizing that her painting is an outcome of her own physical and mental needs.
“With every new painting, I have the chance to reanalyze myself,” the artist says, adding that painting enables her to think. “Thought does not just have to be with words. You can think with colors, spaces or even with a void. This is also another language and painting is like learning a new language,” she concludes.
Speaking about her experiences as a female artist, Hatapkapulu says painting is a way of challenging the void, but she adds that this war is meant to be meaningful. “I believe that women need a language beyond the existing languages of the world. Since they are deep creatures, languages one uses cannot be enough for them. Their complexity requires a more satisfactory language,” she adds.
“Don Quixote on the Beach” will be on display until the end of October at the Kare Art Gallery, located on Abdi İpekçi Street, No: 26/9 in Nişantaşı. For more information, visit www.karesanat.com.
