Channel one plus one

It is impossible to predict what effect an exhibition space and time will have on Guclu Öztekin's works. Three weeks ago the floor of Rampa was almost obscured by a scattered carpet of his paintings and sketches. Yet up until the moment that installation began this paper-based portfolio had only experienced its first period of production. Once in the exhibition space, a secondary process, which saw the paintings morph into and with the gallery's walls and floor, began. This undulating, cognitive involvement Öztekin assumes with his works and the new forms and techniques he applies to them as time progresses, forms the essential substance of his practice. While each painting was previously autonomous in its own frame of paper, when re-positioned in a three-dimensional exhibition context Öztekin sets to work once again to assert a new layer of language to unify threads of cross-reference throughout the space.

Öztekin explains his process of working as one of following a series of channels. These channels represent different focuses and applications of techniques, but they do not always follow one direct path and can branch off on another tributary as the context shifts. Several channels clearly prevail within Rampa: firstly and most true to the previous stage of production - there are the paintings that have simply been hung without any on-site alterations; then there are the site-specific wall paintings conceived during the installation period; another channel allows for the multi-layering of works, where either a number of works or techniques become one, or one work becomes many; a common channel is that of erasure; and lastly in contrast to the former, is a play on dimensions whereby what was previously a flat work on paper is now seen in Rampa as a sculpted three-dimensional form. These channels criss-cross the gallery and place the audience in the midst of a web of shapes, forms, techniques and repetitions that express the culminating channel: one of composition.

It is intriguing that most of Öztekin's works start their lives as rather traditionally rendered paintings. Often the canvas is a sheet of rectangular paper on which he paints images that can be read as understood forms – such as faces, characters, cartoon-like vehicles and text. Yet this is just the base for the more defining acts of his practice, within which he speculates on the limits of painting, and more literally on the limits of his own 'traditional' paintings, their surface and content. The act of erasing his own works, by inflicting them with punched out holes and scalpel incisions, results in exquisite textures and allows for subtle movements of light and hence form. Often the networks of holes result in delicate webs of papery lace and when these are suspended over silver foiled wall-tapes as many are in Rampa, they shimmer incandescently, like fragile insect wings. Other works here have been systematically carved away to leave nothing but a skeleton of their original body on the wall and their flesh lies in a rainbow of tatters on the floor. When Öztekin foresees a different type of conclusion for a work he employs glue and water to papier maché the previously flat image into a new enlivened form. A flat face becomes a caricature of itself, or an area of ceiling a landscape of stalactites. If his channels interfere, the erasures can become inverted and are then used as stencils for further creation; or the skeleton of a work that could be hung straight is instead positioned in a wave-like form across a wall painting that then leads into another work and so and and so forth.

As Öztekin breaks loose from his own set of structures, the installation takes on a multi-lingual shape. There are so many details of action and technique in his world that the cumulative experience one enjoys in the gallery can only be momentary. Like the often ephemeral quality of the works on display, their life-time in this symbiotic relationship is not meant to last and each piece will eventually return to a more standard form similar to the one they originated from. So, it is only for this one month that they will live and breathe together and Öztekin's speculations on the limits of painting are turned into a material scenario way beyond the confines of a canvas, a frame or a piece of paper.