Salon Rouge

About

Interpreting women's issues with her idiosyncratic plastic language and symbolism, the artist put herself in the centre and broke herself into pieces and focussed on the various women here in her previous exhibition at the gallery, “Black Box” (2013). In Salon Rouge, she diverts her gaze away from herself, towards her surroundings, and paints the women around her and her stories in a realistic tone in surrealistic environments. The pictorial drama, which is the artist's hallmark, emphasised by the sharp light she uses, ups its dosage with the women's expressions. The uncanny circumstances the women go through and and may do so in the future anchor themselves with the audience's gaze somewhere between dream and reality.

These women who stand by themselves within the infinitude of the background, hint at a struggle of survival as well as a feeling of being disoriented in dark waters or dark forests. A hidden audacity mixes in with a humble heroism.

The ancient tradition of portrait painting comes together through a special setup at the gallery space. The paintings are in a classical museum setup. A nebulous red smoke integrates itself with the similarly coloured space. The artist turns the struggle and heroism of the women she paints into a series of fairy tales with her trademark style.

İnsel İnan, in his essay for the exhibition catalogue, says the following about the artist's work:

“This exhibition, in which the unconformity between things exhibited in a museum and the ones the artist points to, nestles into the focal point of the paintings, challenges the fetishism of the eviscerated objects the museum receives. It turns upside down the game of the voyeurism that feeds the system. The words of the artist turn into social criticism with the analogy between the fetishisation and oppression of women, and the museum's view of the artwork. The female figure is prevalent in Gülin Hayat Topdemir's paintings. Inarguably, the association of Topdemir with symbolists doesn't solely consist of what these female figures reflect. Like symbolists, Topdemir also embeds a reaction in her paintings that is romantic, lyrical but also harsh towards society and taboos. While the female figures reflect the most clean, pure and ideal, they are also distressing with their uncanny looks. Woman is the provoker of evil, debaucher, fetish. Topdemir's figures take their place on the canvases with the contrasts of purity and the imputed social sins. They flush their personal sufferings into the Salon Rouge Museum Space through their silence. The subconscious inventory created by the obligation to stay silent against abuse and violence, feeds off the same source as the symbolists: hate.” 

*Salon Rouge: Red Salon