FUSUN ONUR

Fusun Onur was the first artist to introduce the avant-garde to the Istanbul art scene in the early 1970's. Her oeuvre is so rich and diversified that it ranges from painting to installation, from the political to the poetic. Her work deserves a more extensive examination than can be provided within the aims and limits of this book. Because Onur was born in a waterfront house on the Asian coast of the Bosphorus and still lives there, her work reflects, relates to and embodies the mysterious, ever-changing poetic nature of the Bosphorus.

In her recent installations, Onur takes the challenge of visualizing what is ‘unpresentable,' music. Onur elaborates her relation with music as follows; ‘I, myself, when I listen to music, I can almost touch it. I feel its softness or hardness. Or I can see its color. As if breathing, I can feel its upward or downward movement. I can perceive the space into which the music is expanding. I can see whether it moves with short steps or with fleeing movement, and I envy its power that animates living energy. I think that music is superior to the other arts. For this reason, I try to make soundless music.'

With ‘lived' materials like old fabrics and furniture, insignificant objects like plastic glasses, braids, tulle, what is available in her house and neighborhood, Onur composes silent, songs, opuses and preludes like “Note” 1998, “Opus I” 1999, “What the Earth Sang” 2000, “Prelude” 2000, “Opus-Fantasia” 2001, “Nocturne” 2001 and “Song of the Sea” 2002. ‘Music's raw materials are notes. ‘These notes, when alone, don't mean anything. But when they are disciplined with rhythm, they gain significance. Tonal extension. My raw materials are visual arts' materials: Square, rectangle, dot, line, color, big and small forms. It is a rhythmic extension of forms. Taking everyday materials, I want to discipline them and give them a meaning they didn't possess before.' As Onur eloquently deciphers, in her musical pieces, the shapes, colors, textures of the objects, the distance and relation between them are delicately arranged to accentuate the rhythm of her inner music.

Fusun Onur contributes to the present exhibition with her music installation: “Note” 1998. In “Note”, a minimalist installation with rolls of cloth, plastic ball enveloped in tulle and wooden stools topped with embroidered tapestry, music appears spatially through the poetic rhythm of the objects of her memories, fantasies and childhood games. She furthers her tendency to minimalism in her dreamy “Nocturne” 2001. Onur radically reduces the three-dimensional installation to almost two-dimensions, like a drawing. She choose materials reminiscent of nostalgic evening dresses; shinny beads, golden paper, and old laces, and ‘disciplines' them in the rhythm and harmony of a nocturne. Creating a notebook of three-dimensional landscape drawings, Onur calls for an intimate relationship with the audience.

(Fulya Erdemci)