Irfan Onurmen: Panic

Irfan Onurmen is one of  the outstanding representative of contemporary turkish art. He has  shown an increasing presence in many of the major international art markets last years. He is represented by Pi Artworks since 2000 and has been the primary artist of the gallery.
 
Living and working in Istanbul, during mid 80s Onurmen got known for his  canvases of  stereotypes of Turkish people, he started working with different materials as well as painting  early 90s. He has created  series he named as  “Pentulle” and “ Sculptulle” from the fabric tulle. A transparent fabric  mainly used for wedding gowns. Late nineties he has introduced relief and sculptures from newspapers that he  called Achieve Series.
 
“PANIC” is the sixth one of these Achieve series. Onurmen has  done one big installation from newspapers in the middle of the main gallery. Piece consists of more than 50 small newspaper works mounted in to each other like an electrical circuit.
 
“ Being late, being alone, getting stuck in traffic, swine flu, aids, getting laid off, getting caught while cheating, hygiene,  being in the middle of a crowd, loosing nature gradually, sexual repression, the thread on war, terror, the necessity of consumption... feelings like these leads us into PANIC. PANIC is one the most typical features of today’s people.
 
Today,  in an environment where Panic is sometimes created consciously, contemporary living, urbanization, and developing technologies trigger the psychology of Panic in people. My works at my upcoming show underlines all these elements that corrupts the nature of man” Irfan Onurmen, Istanbul 2009