Exhibitions

Shadow Memory and Intermediate States

Devabil Kara’s art continues to be constructed upon the traces and shadows that signify existence—remnants of what was lived and what existed in the past, left behind in the present moment. Over time, she seems to have imparted to her audience a personal mythology in which she attempts to define what exists and occurs here and now, not through presence, but through the absence of being. Certain entities and evocations that we are accustomed to seeing repeatedly in her paintings have now transformed into data encoded within the memory of the Devabil Kara viewer. The shadow of her chair—an object from her studio used since the very beginning of her artistic journey—animal and plant imagery referencing the memory of nature, and spatial evocations are among the most prominent of these. One of the most important characteristics distinguishing humans from other living beings is the ability to process learned information through a mental operation, transform it into new knowledge, abstract it, and pass it on to future generations. Memory is the distinguishing feature of being human and the prerequisite for thought.

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2015

For a considerable time, the artist appears to have focused on information and inferences gained from the traces left in the mind by nature and life—elements that human memory cannot fully encode or that do not even belong to one’s own memory. Scientists classify memory in various ways. One of these approaches is to consider memory as individual, collective, and cultural. Devabil Kara’s traces and shadows travel from personal experiences, her own memory, and her own mythology toward the collective memory, and from there toward the traces and shadows that constitute cultural memory. While the chair in the artist’s studio is an image pertaining to personal memory, it takes on symbolic meanings for the collective memory. It is possible to seek the trace of cultural memory in architectural forms and spatial designs. Cultural memory transcends the connection of personal and social memory to the recent past, challenging time across generations and eras.

Whatever remains permanent regarding culture, especially architectural structures, patiently awaits humans where they were encoded to refresh the memory, even if individuals or societies forget. The traces of the past undergo physical wear and change over time; in her paintings, Kara creates living works, in a sense, by combining organic materials such as paper pulp and wax with the canvas surface. Time alters the textures in the paintings very slowly. While the traces and shadows created by the artist undergo transformation behind a veil of mystery, they carry new propositions for the viewer’s memory. There is no conclusion or final judgment in these paintings; they play variable games in our memory, harmonizing with the rhythm of the human consciousness and perception as it renews itself.

Recently, the artist has incorporated a new method into her pictorial language.

In these paintings, which reminiscent of a kind of pointillism with small lines, we encounter geometric compositions created with a patiently layered linear texture.

Geometry is the language of abstract concepts we create in our minds that do not exist in nature. Humans control and transform nature through geometry, objectifying usable spaces and objects by using the principles of geometry. Regardless of which traces or shadows pass over geometric forms and no matter how much the material is deformed, every work in which we find the trace of geometry preserves its own abstract integrity against time.

Against the games of memory and nature, the product of human thought resists the time that flows, changes, and transforms.