TEM Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition of the paintings of NurÖzalp, who divides her time between Berlin and Istanbul, until April 22.The latest exhibition by Özalp includes large-scale and medium sized paintings. Her favorite concepts are parallels that set up the foundation of the painting, the world of clouds, lakes and the sea, paintings that try to show an attachment to the reality of the world with two symbols, while remaining on the abstract side of things. Some depict the land and some are wrapped up in white and become rain; some are of a distant lake or clouds lost in the mist. The artist says some of her paintings carry the spirit of "haiku," (a very short form of Japanese poetry), as the images she looks at and sees are extracted out of her in a simplified form.Ağacın Sesi (Voice of the Tree), 2016

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Oil painting

Of course the larger scale works require long commitments. The way she combines colors is sometimes very classical, but she does not forget small touches, splattering and spreading her paints. She established a very live area on the canvas. Her compositions are solid and we observe different setups in these network of relations: Chairs, tables, references to the sunset and so on. The artist sometimes dreams of venues, cities, people and their stories but all these are hidden behind the colors, the folds of the texture and even behind the painting itself. This is the adventure of those on the canvas; the balance of things established through the production of squares, circles, parallels, crosses and reproduction thereof with paint and other materials. Thus, Özalp has painted "Ağacın Sesi" ("Tree's Voice"), "Hedef Kim?" ("Who's the Target?"), "Sunak" ("Altar") and "Yol Ayrımı" ("Crossroads") in an aesthetic area shaped with these concepts.The artist has sometimes listened to the provocative call of colors and sometimes hidden behind black. While she uses colors as she likes, she embraces the call for green when she uses red or the call for pink when she uses green. Özalp sometimes plays this game of colors and sometimes just trusts the ups and downs of a single color. But she always does this freely, without limiting herself. There are symbols she uses in her paintings, for example a tree, which means a country, or a faith, or a Narcissus covered in greens, a nature that appreciates itself and is in love with itself. Sometimes she attaches embroidery to the canvas and sometimes redoes that embroidery.Sunak (Altar), 2016

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Acrilic, oil painting collage

Another very unique characteristic of the artist is her fondness for fabrics, needlework, and embroidery. Such fabrics and embroidery are symbols of domestic chores, of life itself and the values of the middle class. And the artist right at this point is also close to popular culture as she is interested in images, objects and certain attitudes that get lost in daily life. Life includes variety, and just because the richness of images makes one's head dizzy, being attached to a certain point is like being thirsty on purpose. The artist wants to do what she wants as much as she can; she is against classifications or being put into categories.There are many references to landscaping and nature all set up with paints running in parallel to each other with soft transitions and plain meanings. The thought of meditation, a moment of catharsis, the moment we look at nature, the artist walks among these paths and her pictures going through these moments touch the soul.Özalp, who makes us think of the failures, cruelty and barbarity of societies that do not believe in the power of thought stands against this using her life entangled with art and devoted to the power and magic of thought.