Murat Akagunduz

Galeri Manâ, Istanbul

Vienna, MAK; Hannover, Kunstverein, Signs Taken in Wonder: Searching for Contemporary Istanbul, 2013, pp. 36-37

Emre Baykal, Beral Madra and Tanil Bora, Murat Akagunduz, Istanbul 2012, p. 51

"The Island-Continent series (2010-2011) finds its source in the interaction between Akagunduz's own individual memory and the memory of the landscape he is painting. The Princes' Islands which he sailed back and forth to with a small sailing boat, form the most powerful images of his years of childhood and youth... In addition to the romantic island image that corresponds to his childhood years in Akagunduz's own individual history, the Island-Continent series also brings to the surface of the canvas a much harsher image that belongs to the same island and has been inscribed in the memory of our recent political history. On one side of Yassiada, an island that has been used as a place of exile for centuries, there lies a small, steeped path, where Akagunduz used to cast anchor with his father during his childhood. Murat Akagunduz's painting continues to explore the visual traces of the social, cultural and political climate across Turkey along a trajectory defined by his inner journey and especially in his recent period, with a gaze directed towards pure nature itself... The depth, perception for volume and soft transitions Akagunduz produces with the use of transparent layers, superimposed without the use of colour add, instead of a linear perspective, a spatial perspective in which the materials' own colour and light gain prominence."

Emre Baykal, cited in: Emre Baykal, Beral Madra and Tanil Bora, Murat Akagunduz, Istanbul 2012, pp. 101, 109 & 113.