VENICE.- The Kurdish-Turkish artist Ahmet Güneştekin returns to Italy after a major solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome. The new exhibition, titled Sessizlik / Silenzio / Silence, curated by Sergio Risaliti, coincides with the launch of the cultural activities of the Güneştekin Foundation, housed in Palazzo Gradenigo. The palazzo, located in Venice's Castello district, was purchased by the artist and underwent major restoration work over the past two years.
Sessizlik / Silenzio / Silence is a complex display of artworks including paintings and sculptures, a sort of staging spread across the ground floor, the first floor and the exterior of the building. There are 11 bronze sculptures and an equal number of oil paintings displayed on the walls of the building's two floors. The sculptures, of varying sizes and dimensions, reaching over three meters in height, were created in the artist's workshops and ateliers in Istanbul and are on display for the first time.
Conceived as site-specific works, they depict a diverse community of people captured in various poses. The figure of a young woman welcomes us at the entrance to the building, in an arrangement reminiscent of ancient façade decorations, such as those that adorned, in ancient times, churches and noble palaces, royal residences and theatres with their own symbols and iconography. Many of the bronze works depict labourers in their work clothes, holding tools. Their features are inspired by the very workers involved in the building’s restoration. They are portrayed at rest, tired, almost absent-minded, exhausted. In other cases they stand, as if lost in thought, amidst those very walls they have helped restore to their former splendour, and they blend in with the people wandering through the halls of Palazzo Gradenigo. Some of them hold objects that are dear to the artist, such as animals, skulls, and symbolic elements belonging to Güneştekin's figurative repertoire, both in sculpture and in paintings. The presence of these objects opens a temporal parenthesis, marks a suspension of time, and connects past and future, as if another temporality were inserted between the actions that were already accomplished and those yet to be accomplished. Beyond the reality to which these figures allude, archaeological time creeps in, the time of collective memory, traditions, and artistic civilisations.
The remaining figures are anonymous visitors who seem wandering through the rooms, eventually blending in with the public: the result is a gaze play between artworks and public life. One of the workers is sitting on the floor, taking a break from work, trying to rest, seemingly disconnected from what's happening around him. The figure is overwhelmed by sloth, perhaps indifferent, bulimic, to the point of being arrogant.
On the ground floor we find a second figure, over two meters tall. It is the artist's self-portrait. He holds no chisel or paintbrush, and he doesn't strike a pose as if he were in front of a photographer. He welcomes us, asking us to be silent. He raises the index finger of his left hand to his face, in the typical gesture attributed to the god Harpocrates. This gesture marks a substantial hyatus between the outside space, where confusion and distraction reign, and the inside of the building, where attention, concentration, and contemplation are required. Through his art, the artist asks us to fall silent, so that me may tiptoe into a place far removed from the bustle and the digital din of the outside world.
He asks us to concentrate and focus on the deeper meanings of the works. “Silence” is evoked here because there is too much noise, both around and within us, there are too many visual messages and too much digital information that each passing moment destroy the silence and deprive us of our capacity for contemplation and attention to the words and feelings of others. Silence is also a way to make room for listening to those who are overwhelmed with sorrow, those who rebel, and are silenced.
In Güneştekin's view, silence also includes the one of those who have lost the right to express themselves in their native language. Silence is the fate of the cultures of defeated peoples, silenced by censorship; it is the silence of burnt books, of erased alphabets. Silence also surrounds another of Güneştekin's most significant works, previously presented at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, Sarcophaguses of Alphabet, now part of the National Gallery's permanent collection.
“In silence, I listen to lost voices, I gather invisible memories and broken fragments”, the artist stated. “Art is not merely aesthetics, but also an attempt to heal wounds and leave a message for the future. From my Kurdish identity, from the losses experienced by my family and my people, from the silence of those who have lost their home and language, I have learnt that art speaks above all where words fail. Sometimes it is the light, sometimes the weight of bronze, sometimes the void itself. Each of these elements is a different language of silence. With my 'silence', I try to make visible the memory, resistance, and rebirth that resonate in it”.
Along with the bronze sculptures, a series of large-scale paintings made with oil on canvas and other materials are also installed on the various floors. These eleven wall-mounted works reveal the artist's distinctive painting technique, which shapes the surface, both in the abstract and geometric sections and in those featuring iconographies and symbols derived from ancient Mediterranean and Mesopotamian civilisations.
Another striking aspect is the resonance of the colours, which vibrate to the point of unleashing profound sensations. A dominant colour can incorporate multiple nuances, generating a polyphony of emotions. The vibration of the painting is achieved by adding hatching to the layering of the paint, a decomposition of the surface into minute marks that create a luminous resonance, a particular vibration.
We could define it as a “removal” method, whereby the artist completely segments the oil paint spread on the canvas or panel, removing small strips with appropriate tools, with skill and maximum control, in order to make the surface vibrate. The result is perfectly visible when viewed up close. It is a continuous series of hatchings, an alternation of thin linear empty spaces that interrupt the pictorial flow. The impression is that this system generates a sequence of vibrating signs that gives a luminous rhythm to the musicality of the painting, and from there on to cosmic radiation.
At the centre of each painting are embedded doors, recovered from Anatolian markets and villages. They are old doors recovered after careful restoration. Most of these objects, magnificent for the quality of their structure and decorations, are carved with floral and geometric motifs, brass tulips, clover leaves, birds, and stars. Güneştekin elaborates on these motifs and enriches them by adding magical gardens, deities and heroes with magical powers, powerful and fallen angels, swan-horses, and other symbolic creatures such as the phoenix and peacocks, symbols of immortality. Each mythological figure blends with the others in an iconographic atlas that merges different geographies and times.
The bronze figures are installed in front of these “sacred doors”. The surreal layer of the figures merges with the abstract and metaphysical layer of the paintings. The display reconstructs a possible universe shared between sculpture and painting, between reality and abstraction, between the social and the transcendental. And the iconographic syncretism of the different languages and techniques becomes a message also addressed to politics, a message of coexistence and dialogue between peoples and communities, between nations and cities.
The Venetian exhibition thus presents all the major themes of the production of an artist who, over the past three decades, has chosen to be a bridge between past and future, between East and West: in Güneştekin's art, memory and reminiscence are a form of resilience, awakening, and rebirth.
This interweaving encompasses the great myths of the civilisations of the Mediterranean, Anatolia, and ancient Mesopotamia, as well as marginal and forgotten histories, ancient symbols and techniques, tales and fables heard at home and in the streets, the melodies of the oppressed and fugitives, accounts of resistance and dissidence, rites and fantasies of other worlds and times.
“In this spirit,” explains the exhibition curator Sergio Risaliti, “Güneştekin gathers the scraps and ruins of ancient civilisations, takes care of the fragments and remains, listens to the quiet voice of the people and communities, with the desire to heal fractures and process wounds caused by History and Power.”
“My art,” Güneştekin explains, “is born from the decision to listen to forgotten or suppressed voices and vocabularies, and to recover fragments, in order to found new worlds and new communities”. Being of Kurdish origin, the artist knows well what it means to lose everything, even the words of the mother tongue, dignity, and freedom of expression and imagination.
Displayed in the rooms of Palazzo Gradenigo, Güneştekin's works have the ability to create new emotional and cognitive experiences along these lines. These works lead individuals to confront the changing fortunes and vicissitudes of societies over time and across geographies. The display pushes memories and emotions beyond mere suggestion or personal testimony, transforming them into dynamic elements of collective memory, iconographic traditions, and the cultural and spiritual heritage of ancient civilisations. As a result, the works foster a sympathetic and shared sense of participation.
On the occasion of the Sessizlik / Silenzio / Silence exhibition, the newly renovated first two floors of Palazzo Gradenigo are open to the public. The renovations, designed by Studio Torsello, will involve the building's five floors. They will continue until the end of 2026 and conclude in 2027 with the permanent opening of the Italian headquarters of the Güneştekin Foundation. A calendar of exhibitions and international exchanges in the field of interdisciplinary education will make Palazzo Gradenigo a new hub for contemporary arts in Venice.
