‘My painting is imaginary because so is my view of the world.”
(1941, Çorum-25 September 2022, İstanbul)
Özge Atasoy
Painter and poet Gürkan Çoşkun, who used the name Komet (comet), passed away at the age of 81.
Born in Çorum in 1941, Gürkan Çoşkun continued his education at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University after graduating from Çorum High School. The artist, who went to France with a state scholarship in 1971, studied at Vincence University, Department of Plastic Arts, and opened his first exhibition in Rouen, France in 1974. Having lived his life between Istanbul and Paris, the artist opened fifteen solo exhibitions in Turkey, nine in Paris, and one each in Vienna, Salzburg, Lausanne and Brussels. He also took part in many international exhibitions with his works. The ‘Painting Exhibition’ he opened in Istanbul Dirimart in 2021 was the last exhibition of the artist. His works are exhibited in museums such as the Lausanne Canton Museum, the Vienna Museum of Modern Arts, the Copenhagen Graphic Arts Museum, the Paris Museum of Modern Arts and Istanbul Modern.
The artist, who closely examined pre-Renaissance Italian art, Pompeian paintings and Italian Primitives and was influenced by certain aspects of them, produced works that were based on the mysterious world of the subconscious but did not break with realism.
Towards the middle of the 1970s, he started to produce works that showed continuity with the meanings and psychological atmosphere of his old paintings. However, starting from these years, Western types replaced the villager and urbanite Turkish type, and the irregular crowded groups were replaced by single figures and double or triple figure groups. “Three Figures in the Stream” (1976, IRHM) and “Composition with Two Figures” (IRHM) are examples of works of this period. The theme of death and pain, which had an introverted meaning before, has turned into a consciously living expression in these works. Komet emphasizes both the figure and the event with sharp lines, stains and colours in his paintings, the main element of which is the figure and the event is fictionalized depending on this element. On the other hand, the setting in which the figure and the event are placed is much more romantic and the artist here has made the contrast even more clear by using a transparent painting technique and soft colours. He has increased the effect power of the painting with the paint spills he used deliberately from place to place. From 1973 to 1981, the artist made paintings dominated by Neo-Romantic, Neo-Expressionist and Post-Modernist expressions, and after these tendencies, he reached a completely unique expression that reflects his poetic view to his art. Komet, on the one hand, was close to pre-modern painters, and on the other hand, he was influenced by the art of ancient Mesopotamian civilizations such as the Hittite and Assyrian civilizations.
The poems of the artist, who generally wanders between the layers of imagination and reality and blends visuality and imagination, published in various magazines, were collected in the book titled “Olabilir Olabilir” in 2007.
Kaynakça/Bibliography: •https://www.themagger.com/komet-ressam-gurkan-coskun/ •https://www.izmir.art/tr/ressam-komet-hayatini-kaybetti •https://www.alem.com.tr/roportajlar/komet-ile-yeni-sergisi-uze rine-soru-cevap- •https://www.galerisoyut.com.tr/artist/komet/