Golden Hours
Versus Art Project, ISTANBUL
15.12.2022 - 28.01.2023
SABO’s solo exhibition “Golden Hours”, curated by Elâ Atakan, meets with the audience at Versus Art Project between December 15, 2022, to January 28, 2023.
In his third solo exhibition held at the gallery, SABO brings the loving, compassionate light of happy moments to his works. Tracing a benevolent and warm feeling, the artist pursues memories of peace while shuffling family albums.
His works, in which light finds a different exposition each time, bear traces of Paracetamol and Time Machine, SABO’s previous exhibitions held at Versus Art Project. With the dizzying effect of colors, the expression changes place in fictional time, leaving its place to a more subjective narrative, peaceful moments, and memories illuminated by the sun from different angles. The red of Paracetamol and the Prussian blue of Time Machine give way to warm oranges and yellows in “Golden Hours”, carrying a message of hope with it.
The golden hours that are warmed by the sun, refer to an ideal moment over which time is flowing, and at the same time recall an imaginary space. The floor of this imaginary space consists of light and different states of light. When we look closely at the architecture fictionalized by SABO, we can see that it bears traces of a lived and optimistic golden age.
In this exhibition, the artist adds a new layer to his works; he paints abstract spaces dispersed on canvases, resembling water droplets, which he calls leaking lights. For SABO, these particles are the doors through which he infiltrates the golden moments that he constructs, in which he is not included. The abstract spaces used by the artist in this exhibition carry clues about not only the depth of meaning as well as the working technique. Transferring the dry paint and collage method that he applies on paper to canvases, with heavily painted abstract spaces, the artist takes a journey through time.
It is not a coincidence that the areas portrayed in SABO’s works in the “Golden Hours” exhibition are by the sea, by the pool, or by the water. While water refers to the mother’s womb, the first seed of the exhibition, it is also the best reflector of light and perhaps the best accompaniment to the moments of happiness defined by the artist.
“Golden Hours” carries us to sections of familiar but unrealized life in the pursuit of happiness, in the dream of lightness, and in absent spaces.
“The eye performs the miracle of unbinding the non-spirit to the soul, the happy realm of things, and their god, the sun. […] It is necessary to understand word for word what sight teaches us: through it, we are touching the sun, and the stars, we are also everywhere, close to the things nearby as well as far away, and we even have the power to imagine ourselves elsewhere… In this exhibition where
he imagines himself in moments of happiness, SABO embarks on this journey of inner vision described by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. And through this exhibition, he invites us to a dream of lightness in the shadow of the golden age of the past, of healing, with the hope of its light.”
Elâ Atakan
