Erdag Aksel

Istanbul, Santralistanbul, Modern and Beyond: 1950-2000, 2007-08, p. 366, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue are fairly Condition: (i) This work is in very good condition. There is no restoration visible under the ultra violet light. (ii) This work is in very good condition. There are minor wear marks throughout the edges, more visible on the centre of extreme right edge. There are surface irregularities throughout the painting as part of the artistic process. There is no restoration visible under the ultra violet light.
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Erdag Aksel's deceptively naïve paintings are a tribute to the radical modernisation of Turkey following the coup d'état of 1980. The advent of the new political regime saw a liberalisation of the country's import laws and a dramatic sea-change occurred within Turkey's consumption of consumer-goods. In 1985, the year in which Aksel completed his Durable Consumer Goods series, Turkey saw the sum of its exports and imports peak at 49 percent of its GNP (www.country-data.com).

Trade policy of the 1970s had strictly controlled the import of foreign goods. As a result basic and durable goods largely traded from Germany, such as margarine and coffee granules, blue-jeans and detergents, as well as irons, washing-machines and televisions were extremely hard to procure and, in most cases, trafficked on the black market. What in many nations would have been perceived as a somewhat mundane and functional object, became a glamorous device within Turkish society. These banal materials were coveted possessions, and people went to great lengths to acquire televisions, irons and other perfectly average goods.

Aksel's works deify these Things; painted on a monumental scale, the iron and the television take on imposing proportions – becoming totemic. Commanding the empty space that frames them, the entire focus is on the Object. Depicted as though intended to be viewed from below, the perspective is reminiscent of Renaissance portrayals of Christ and the Virgin Mary painted foreshortened and above the viewer, altarpieces overwhelming in their power and might. With humorous irony the artists presents these works with a 'certificate of guarantee' that states, it "does not cover damage caused by inappropriate or out-of-purpose use of the painting and that documents without the signature of the artist and the sales date are deemed null and void."

These rare, iconic paintings by Erdag Aksel capture the essence of modernity, and convey the zeitgeist of Turkey in the early 1980s.