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Serap Kökten

She was born in İstanbul, Turkey, on May 31. Kökten attended the Yeditepe University, Faculty of Fine Arts and graduated from the Department of Plastic Arts. Then, she got sketch training from illustrator Ufuk Suçsuzer, theoretical and practical lessons from worthy teachers like Prof. Zahit Büyükişleyen, Ergin İnan, Canan Beykal, Kaya Özsezgin, Prof. M. Turan Aksoy, Sinan Demirtaş, Ferhat Özgür. Visual example in Rh+ Art magazine, YKY Art World, Ayrıntı magazine, Hürriyet Show magazine, Lebriz and Artfulliving online magazines some articles in  used artist’s works. Her portfolio has been the subject of symposium article “Many Esthetic Recommendations for the Collectors” which was presented at Ankara University, Faculty of Languages and History-Geography, Department of Art History, VII. International Young Art Historians Symposium. Some of her works were included in the book ‘Contemporary Rhetoric of Aesthetics’ in 2016 and used as cover photograph. “Geography is Destiny” named work was used as a visual example in the book introduction published on independent news site T24 by author Murat Bjeduğ for the book “Cereyanlar” by author Tanıl Bora. The same year writer Murat Bjeduğ published in his columns at T24 independent news website “Light beyond consciousness: About Serap Kökten and her art and in 2018 “Immortality’s Dance”. The artist continues to create and exhibit art at her own workshop in Istanbul.

BEHIND ARTIST’S WORK

The starting point is to be able to use imagination beyond the rules of art. In contrary to the “theatre” a person acts to the outer world, having his personal reality living inside of him meet with images to be painted with impunity is essential. And from there to emphasize what has been pushed into the unconscious and poke into the invisible knowing the fact that the society cannot provide solutions for depressed people while despite of the rising values of the era, the natural questioning of the “spiritual depth”, the instantaneous collapses and spiritual elevations transpiring consequently the tide inside oneself integrates onto the canvas.

All these virtual states manifest themselves in imaginary forms and all the details of the tangible ideas combine with the guiding strength of the symbols.

Traces of our cultural elements, not limited to traditional ones, symbolic images that are carried like intellectual rituals of Charles Baudelaire, Albert Einstein, İbn-i Sina, Ömer Hayyam, Charlie Chaplin,Herakleitos, Friedrich Nietzsche or İbn-i Haldun…

“The reality waiting to be discovered in the twilight rather than the one visible in the daylight”

The image that is presented to us is far from being a constant, it is what we want to see, what we make of it through our imagination thereby a dynamic interrogation of the soul and sometimes a unity of all these contradictions.To express abstract thoughts with symbols is what is left from this journey.

One should refrain from realities, aesthetic traditions and rules, this is how you become part of this imaginary play.