Mustafa Horasan

Pi Artworks, Istanbul

"In every act, Horasan shares with us the private store of skill and imagination that he has pilfered piece by piece from ambiguity. He does not attempt to convince us about the truthfulness of the world he shows: he simply expects us to have a sense of the validities of that world by hinting at them...His figures arouse the impression that there exists a secret shared among all the characters represented on the surface: a secret that only they know. Their anxiety, their insecurity, and their psychological state in the face of the chain of routine actions they are obliged to conform to all lead one to think that they are overcome by a sence of self-worthlessness and by a feeling that life is empty and that their bodies are inadequate contrivances. Although the majority of them are engaged in some act or other, it is as if we as viewers seem to be observing the moment of silence that takes place after whatever is happening has transpired. The feeling that is being conveyed is one of having happened upon an event that only recently took place among these figures and that we ourselves are like intruders. On the other hand, these figures, which know they will never become 'worldly' and which have acquiesced to their fate in the knowledge that they will remain fictions, are in such an obvious mise-en scène that it seems as if they have assumed these poses because they know they are being watched: they have assumed roles that take the place of some thing or some event as its representatives...He hasn't attempted to represent reality exactly but the states that are the cause of his internal experience have begun flowing more clearly into his painting..."

Levent Calikoglu cited in: Levent Calikoglu, horasan/m 1988>2003, Istanbul 2003, pp. 133-134.