More works by Günay Shamsi
Philo-surrealism
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BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The Baku-born and, since 2015, Berlin-based artist enjoys pushing the limits of perception. Her images possess thoroughly mannerist characteristics – the ground and parts of the body repeatedly dissolve into bluish-yellow streaks, clouds and fields of colour. Shamsi varies her themes but not her painting style, whose palette and ductus are characterised by typical and easily identifiable elements. The cream-like colours, constantly contrasted by dark tones of grey and realistically rendered details, are truly amazing, as if parts of the image have been transformed into molten ice cream! Shamsi gives the space free rein, confuses our usual routines and ways of seeing, emphasises two-dimensionality and accentuates the depicted scenes through ellipses and omissions.
Astro-Horse is a perfect example: a splendidly shimmering horse wearing a flexible astronaut’s helmet and gazing into a floating mirror sphere in which we can see a horse’s head without a helmet looking at us. We would not be wrong in pointing out that, in this way, the picture’s virtual viewer – meaning us – is indirectly proclaimed a horse.
Shamsi chooses her titles carefully, often in Latin, in order to give her works a sense of sophistication. She imbues her art with adventures as well as with deeper mysteries and cultural meaning. There are clear references to art history and classical surrealist modernism, but at the same time she is constantly reworking its themes in a highly original manner. In fact, with its unique questions of perception, her Astro-Horse recalls one of the classics of the early modern relationship between image and viewer, one that many academics and intellectuals have attempted to analyse: Diego Velázquez’s courtly painting Las Meninas.
Stephan ReisnerVITA
2003-2007 Berufsfachschule für Malerei «A. AsimZade» bei der Aserbeidschanischen Kunstakademie 2007-2011 Studium der Bühnenmalerei an der Aserbaidschanischen Staatlichen Universität für Kultur und Kunst. Diplom mit Auszeichnung 2015-2018 Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin, Studien gang Freie Kunst / Bildhauerei bei Prof. Else Gabriel. Diplom mit Auszeichnung 2018-2020 Meisterschülerin, bei Prof. Albrecht Schäfer und Prof. Else Gabriel an der Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin
