Yasemin Cengiz Cagatay’s artistic work is a constantly evolving enquiry into cosmos and the human condition. In her paintings ,the familiar and the visionary are inextricably interwoven, creating new associations; like in one of her dream landscapes “Deep Blue”. Her paintings open up windows onto a universe in which narratives are reimagined; leading the viewers onto another plane of consciousness.She aims at ambivalence , creating complex allegories imbued with humor. While seeking to create her own artistic territory, she starts to build on the Surrealist ground and continues to use neo-romantic elements while trying to reach out to the sublime. She feels at ease with Pop Art and in league with Postmodernism, winking at the new rise of the Gothic storytelling. As a person drawn to exaggeration, she takes the intricateness of her paintings to extreme, inviting the viewers to a tactile experience ,creating the illusion of being dense with heavy encrustations of paint: Everyone wants to touch them and are met instead by cool fatness. Fusing an array of vibrantly painted fora and fauna ,she creates an ecosystem inhabited by hybrid creatures. In a visual interplay of the familiar and the unknown, she is trying to imagine macrocosmic depths of the universe.

Oscillating between representation and abstraction, her dream like imagery is frozen in time.Her perspective engenders an indeterminacy that veers sharply from the real world. Producing works of great internal complexity, she aims at creating an artificial reality.Her figures hang in the air somewhere between free fall and surreal suspension.By looking closely at the surfaces of the paintings, you can access the more important information : cosmologies, birds of paradise ,butterflies, sharks, hybrid creatures, mother nature, meditation of the derviches, angels, etc.The occupants of her paintings are the stuff of dreams.Yasemin Cengiz Cagatay’s art is based on her individual imagery, rather than the reality of nature. In her heavily surrealistic digital compositions standing somewhere in between the abstract and the figurative, the intense movement targeting the viewer’s subconsciousness is highly pronounced. The use of color that carries the traces of old master painters and that the artist herself defines as “curvy” and “fluent”, has an important role in Cagatay’s artistic language. Her body of work is reminiscent of the chaotic world the contemporary human being lives in and the inner turmoil it creates, while it offers windows opening into other worlds where escape is possible.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​