Eşzamanlılık, Soyut Sembolizm ve Ayhan Menteş’in Görsel Çalışmasında Varyasyonların Kullanımı

Abstract

The paper offers a monographic account on Turkish Cypriot artist Ayhan Menteş’ experimentation with abstraction, developed parallel to his ideas on creativity, which reinterprets and appropriates ancient and Anatolian symbols through contemporary techniques and compositions. Over 60 years, Menteş accumulated a range of mythologems, collected from ancient myths and symbols, which are cleverly integrated into a distinct form of abstract symbolism based on the notions of repetition, variation and synchronicity. Among the sea of repeated subjects and symbols, the symbol of the fish is highlighted as indicative of the close affinities between Menteş’ life-long interest in and exploration of the unconscious and his visual artistic production. The concept of synchronicity as discoursed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung, also defined as ‘meaningful coincidences’, frames the paper’s theoretical approach. Taking up Jung’s emphasis on the significance of the simultaneity of events that are not causally linked; themes of chance, and the power of creative thought, are considered integral to Menteş’ approach to life and creative processes. Menteş’ work also reveals the wider reception of abstraction during the artist’s student years in Turkey and later life in Cyprus.