Ahmet Güneştekin
The Last Day of Troy, 2012
oil on canvas
78 3/4 x 70 7/8 inches
Courtesy of the gallery

Ahmet Güneştekin
The World of Pegasus, 2012
oil on canvas
39 3/8 x 31 1/2 inches
Courtesy of the gallery

Opening today, November 26th at Marlborough Gallery, New York is an exhibition of recent paintings by Ahmet Güneştekin. The exhibition features oil paintings with Güneştekin’s signature rich colors and detailed, interwoven brushstrokes. Güneştekin creates powerful formal compositions as a means to convey a spiritual message. Aesthetically, his paintings are almost sculptural with their careful modulations of color and intricate, detailed layers of lines that cause the painted forms to appear to emerge from the canvas. Adding to the sense of three-dimensionality is the shallow impasto matrix of precise brushstrokes that comprise the top layer of elaborate lines. Güneştekin employs these colors and lines to convey an overarching theme; the artist states, “My work represents this conflict between the darkness and the light…[my] imagination derives from darkness and seeks the light.” Consequently, the Sun is an important motif in Güneştekin’s work. In the exhibited works “After the Sacred Ritual”, “The Dream of Icarus”, “The Sun Coronet”, and “Zoroaster, the Guardian of the Sun” depicts spheres that seem to emit light from within, but they are constrained by shadowy bands that suggest a menacing darkness. “My signature is the Sun,” Güneştekin states, noting that “my ancestors, the Yezidis, worshipped the Sun before Islamization.” The Yezidis are a Kurdish religious group associated with the mystic traditions of Zoroastrianism and Sufism.

Ahmet Güneştekin will be on view through January 4, 2014.

For more information visit Marlborough Gallery, New York.