bazı şeyler

A BOOK OF NOTHING

I is "the other". "Je est un autre." - Arthur Rimbuad

I was born and grew up in Istanbul. During my middle school years I was obsessed with drawing. At the same time, haunted by thoughts of death. I went after the unknown...

As a young man, multitudes of questions came to me about death, immortality, and the meaning of life. At times, I thought I found the answers but was disappointed each time. Only the power of the "line" (that I could draw) connected me to life and drew life closer. I faced many disappointments every day. And so, I drew everyday...

The dialectic materialism of Karl Marx, the cynicism of Antisthenes and Socrates, the Existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre, the Individualism of Friedrich Nietzsche, and the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud... I was reading and learning. Everything was connected. The questions were endless and their answers were only a part of the truth. I began to understand infinity. Count from zero. Forward or backward...

I was getting angry about the fact that people were doing harm to each other, to people I knew or to me and that I wasn't able to find a solution for that. My anger grew to the point where I wanted to die. At the same time, thinking of death, I was afraid.

As I was choking on my nothingness, suddenly a string was hurled to me and I caught it. I was being pulled to the paper. I was on the paper and the string was under my feet. I was pulling the string and it was transforming itself into many different forms. I relaxed when I played with it. In the end it was transformed to a meaningful form on the paper. I looked and saw it was "I". An "I" that was filtered and emerged from the people and concepts and images that I had encountered during my search for answers. The answer that I had tried to find was in my own hands. As I understood it, I felt at first happiness and then sadness. I was Simurg from Persian mythology, King of the Birds. And I was 30 birds... 30 birds they reach the mountain of Kaf expecting to find their king, the Simurg, awaiting them, but when they alight they realize that they themselves, having undergone their quest for enlightenment, are their own collective king, Simurg, in Persian, also meaning thirty birds (si: thirty, morgh: birds). And the answer was "me".

I now look upon my childhood with an acrid smile but don't feel regret... I was Peter Pan of J.M. Barrie. I was the Little Prince of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Zeze of José Mauro de Vasconselos. I was the Little Black Fish of Behrengi. I was Nemo of Jules Vernes, Asterix of René Goscinny. Ken Parker of Ivo Milazzo, Tim of Georges Remi, yes I was. I was a member of the bands of Enid Blyton. I was Lucky Luke of Morris, Conan of Robert Erwin Howard.

I am an explorer. I'm always on a quest. I try new things. Life is an adventure and the end is evident...

The first part of the drawings in this book are from this process, from my late teens and early 20s. As you see, these works have been influenced by the Expressionism of Wassily Kandinsky, Edward Munch, the Surrealism of Joan Miro, Rene Magritte and Max Ernst, the effect of Mehmet Siyahkalem, (who was a miniature artist from Middle Asia and made shamanic works in the 15th century), the effect of the Turkish artist Yuksel Arslan, who illustrated the book Das Kapital of Karl Marx and lives in France. In 1994, drawings took the first steps to becoming a book. And between 1994-1999 the book looked for its own words. In 1999 the drawings and words came together and said the final word of the drawings.


cover	page 1	page 3	page 5	page 7	page 9	page 11	page 13	page 15	page 17	page 19

page 21	page 23	page 25	page 27	page 29	page 31	page 33	page 35	page 37	page 39	page 41

page 43	page 45	page 47	page 49	page 51	page 53	page 55	page 57	page 59	page 61	page 63

				page 65	page 67	page 69

cover	page 70	page 68	page 66	page 64	page 62	page 60	page 58	page 56	page 54	page 52

page 50	page 48	page 46	page 44	page 42	page 40	page 38	page 36	page 34	page 32	page 30

page 28	page 26	page 24	page 22	page 20	page 18	page 16	page 14	page 12	page 10	page 8

				page 6	page 4	page 2