“Outside My Little World…As I drew the boundaries of my own world, the world enclosed me within its own limits. When your time is up, the world outside will discover your little world… But only when your time is up…”
In facing the external world, the artist explores his inner self—the concept of the “I”—by othering himself. In a different inquiry, he transforms his “I” into the “Other,” evolving into a state of otherness. In doing so, he enriches his critical stance, embarking on a process of questioning and self-critique. One could argue that the artist seeks to have his “I” accepted by the world, to assert his existence with full awareness, to win the battle of being within himself, and ultimately to declare this victory to the external world. He attempts to reveal the artist who has been othered by the world.
In Tuncay Topcu’s works, we can clearly observe the reflections of this evolving process in his exhibition titled “Outside My Little World…” The amorphous forms that shape his inner world are repeated with an undeniable stance in these paintings, which increasingly feature intricate and challenging forms. These forms, positioned on the canvas, embody the artist’s conflicting relationships with the outside world and the reflections of those relationships. His fighting and questioning spirit manifests in ever-shifting, growing, and shrinking patches, merging with a somewhat unruly linear and aerodynamic structure, shaped by his keen sense of color.
Rather than serving as the contours of amorphous forms, the lines seem limitless, constantly subject to change, or even inclined towards it. They are actively present on the canvas, yet seem ready to serve another form, to suddenly change places and transform into something else, existing in a cyclical, perpetually self-transforming state of mind. The overlapping lines, in their effort to annihilate each other, appear as shadows or phantoms of figures, objects, trees—imaginary or real—whose exact nature we cannot fully conceive. These shapes roam the surface of the canvas as if on an eerie journey.
Is this not how the world outside ourselves operates as well? Undoubtedly, the artist is not encountering this world for the first time—it has always been there. However, the artist’s tendency towards inquiry makes him face it again and again. Every time he looks at the outside world, he confronts it anew—this world that has become shameless. Thus, his external world is shaped by whimsical lines, filled with contradictions, and teeming with oppositions like happiness and sadness, hope and despair. The lines, often fragmented, are decorated with ever-changing colors rather than a single hue, resembling disjointed lives without continuity. This uncertain, ambiguity-filled world highlights voids and the prominence of emptiness. The transparent lines visible on the canvas surface seem to indicate uncertainty, as if marked by an indistinctness that challenges our perception. This transparency enhances a self that is transient, constantly open to change. The artist’s ever-present amorphous forms undergo transformation, turning into their opposites, becoming malignant forms that hint at sinister emotions.
The canvas surface reveals a structure that refuses to settle. It showcases monochromatic transitions, embodying clarity, as well as a surface that is colorful, variable, unstable, and prone to differentiation. At times, the spaces between the forms grow blurry, the surface fading away like a distant memory, confronting us with a foggy, old, worn-out past. Ultimately, it forces us to face ourselves—just as the artist confronts himself. The ambiguous, indeterminate structure built upon the canvas leaves us alone with our own fiction, just as the artist surrenders to his own.
