One of the leading exponents of contemporary figurative and expressive painting Yavuz Tanyeli, will be meeting with the audience with his new solo show entitled ‘Donkey’ at C.A.M. Gallery. With the image of donkey which has been started got involve to his work in 80s; the artist, through his master brush strokes, along with the reflections of the nature that he lives in, forms this new series with a staining approach. 

“Each artist has numerous images, symbols, concepts, which they use while composing their work, which constitutes oeuvre’s theme. The character of this corpus represents the artists’ manner. The one who observes the paintings can see the complete story as well as the symbols inside the painting particularly. I have my own list also, though: cypresses, butchers, jazz men, guitarists, donkeys, rosaries, etc.

The image of donkey has been started to appear in my paintings in 80s. I wanted to paint the neighborhood’s wood-chopper’s donkey -named Kadife*- who also brings wood to my atelier in Istanbul, Beykoz. I asked him to bring the donkey into the studio. I took the donkey in and placed some fruits in front of her, I’ve painted her in a large scaled canvas, it turned out good. Afterwards, the image of donkey got into my painting from time to time, it gained its place in many of my paintings. In late years I’ve started to paint black and white, large scaled drawings of donkey. In most of my exhibitions, I wanted to show my drawings also, beside my work on canvas. In this exhibition you will see the donkeys of recent period, black and white, the donkey-looking stains in my brain… “

*Kadife: Meaning ‘Velvet’.