Taner Ceylan

Colour: The colours in the catalogue are accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition.
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Arguably the most impressive Hyperrealist artist in Turkey, and one of the foremost artists on the contemporary Istanbul circuit, Taner Ceylan's astoundingly realistic paintings are technical masterpieces of patience and precision.

Hyperrealism as a movement was born at the beginning of the 21st century. Although relatively widely practised in Europe and the United States in the early 2000s, it was a brave departure from the accepted norms in Turkey. Based within the framework of the Photorealists of the 1960s and 70s, artists of that era would use photographs of people and places to produce highly realistic reproductions on a monumental scale. 

Parallels between Taner Ceylan's work and artists pivotal to the inception of Photorealism, such as Chuck Close, are easy to make. Close's enlarged portraits, such as that of Mark (1978-1979) hanging in the Museum of Modern Art in New York recall the infinite attention to detail and accurate rendering so typical of Ceylan.

There is however an emotional dimension to Ceylan's work largely absent from the Photorealism of the 70s: where the latter strives to record the original with exactitude the other attempts to infuse these realistic paintings with emotion. Basing the work on an actual image, and enlarging it using digital means and the painstaking use of a paintbrush, Ceylan continuously embellishes the original to convey a narrative, and create a new sense of reality.

The artist infuses this image of a boxer with a self-portrait; although the boxer is real, the blood and sweat are not. It is in these elements that the self-portrait is found. The year 2007 was a difficult one for the artist; slated in the local press and suffering from the onslaught both on his skills and his person, Ceylan transferred these emotions and experiences onto his boxer. The bleeding face, the punch-drunk gaze and the bruises all refer to his own emotional experience transferred to his pugilistic model, simultaneously shocking and piteous.

It is an incredible skill to produce works that resonate with the individual on an elemental level, and it is effortlessly achieved by Ceylan. He is truly a Hyperrealist of the highest order.