Obituary: Yüksel Arslan, 1933–2017
By HG Masters
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Arslan’s works were labor-intensive, taking months to complete. After his “Capital” and “Updating Capital” works (all part of the "Arture" series), he began his works called “Influences” and “New Influences," which were based on his readings of philosophers such as René Descartes, Friedrich Nietzsche, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and poets Walt Whitman, Charles Baudelaire, Samuel Beckett, and many others.
Though Arslan exhibited throughout his life, including in a 2002 exhibition at then-newly opened Dirimart Gallery in Istanbul, he received a flood of attention in Europe following the Santralistanbul retrospective. That same year, 2009, several of his works were included in the 11th Istanbul Biennial, “What Keeps Mankind Alive?,” curated by What, How and for Whom/WHW. A 2012 retrospective at Kunsthalle Zurich was organized by Beatrix Ruf and Oliver Zybok and toured to Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Kunsthalle Wien. In 2013, Arslan was featured in the 56th Venice Biennale, “The Encyclopedic Palace,” curated by Massimiliano Gioni. At the time of his death Arslan had created than 700 “Artures” in his lifetime, and will be remembered for his encyclopedic range of subject matter—botany, ethnology, economics, urban architecture, politics, autobiography, history, fantasy—in a genre uniquely his own, “between painting and writing, between painting and poetry.” His leftist political views and psycho-sexual investigations of human beings, following his interest in the writings of Sigmund Freud, remain hugely influential to the current generations of contemporary artists.
H.G. Masters is editor-at-large of ArtAsiaPacific.
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