This year, the thirteenth and fourteenth of the New Proposals-New Propositions exhibitions will be organized. The shows are organized in the summer months since 1998 ?sometimes as a single exhibition and sometimes as a two-phase exhibition. New Proposals-New Propositions nevertheless seems to be achieving its goal: since the first organization, New Proposals-New Propositions exhibitions aim to be a kind of first stop for the young artists in Turkey, and today receives around one-hundred dossiers from all around the country. As the applicant dossiers (which increase in number every year) signify the potential of the young artists in the country, they also give us hints about the educational institutions that accommodate this artistic potential. In the works of the young artists, it is possible to trace the marks of their educational institutions, to investigate how their works overlap or conflict with the traditional structures of the institutions, and to find reflections of how the educational concepts of new institutions are shaped. On the other hand, these young artists certainly reflect an independent attitude in their own scope of creativity. As candidate-artists in a world where visual literacy becomes ever more important, they endeavour to put forth new works with a different voice, a different statement.

The second phase of the New Proposals-New Propositions exhibition shows the works of eight young artists from Anadolu, Dokuz Eylül, Marmara, Sabanci, and Yildiz Teknik Universities. The artists use painting, sculpture, and installation as their means of expression and regard some issues at stake at community level, such as migration or education. In doing this, they also display the associations in their own world woven with dreams. What brings these artists together in this exhibition is not only the fact that they are the eight young persons chosen: At closer look, it is possible to percieve that they start out from society's reflections on the individual, and want to express reality while they refer to the fictional. In the area, where dream and reality mix, Murat Sezer's (Marmara University) suitcase-paintings transform into representational objects of the phenomena of migration and being out of place, as well as that of temporariness and coincidence. They are woven with layers of meaning, which multiply with the viewers' own references to travelling stories. The tickets, trains, rails, and the ghostly figures that seem to be petrified at train stations, which we see among the images of old and nostalgic suitcases, are symbolic elements that remind one of the journeys which the memory makes a lifetime. The suitcase image, which seems to contain in its structure almost everything Sezer wants to tell us, re-appears in a form occasionally blurred with layers of texture and with a more picturesque feeling, or with a repetition game in the logic of the installation. It thus transforms into a kind of sculpture, sometimes with natural materials such as wax or aerated concrete, sometimes with artificial materials. Sezin Eker's (Marmara University) paintings take us on a slightly different journey of the memory: In her paintings, which deal with childhood and childhood innocence, the possibility and meaning of a 'cotton-candy' world, Eker does not consider any specific cultural hierarchy as she uses the references of familiar images. Both the Venus de Milo and Snow White are shown as images in spaces that are depicted like a stage. The empty clothes or the bathtub image that we continuously see in Eker's visual world tell about the individual's effort of freeing itself of 'dressed' identities, and its tragicomic story in the attempt of purifying and returning to itself. Another artist, whose works are loaded with the phenomenon of the self, is Ipek F. Ertan (Marmara University). Her paintings entitled "Ipek Ne Köpek, Köpek Ne Ipek" are huge-size drawings. Yet they are compiled like diaries, they are cartoon-like pictures that express a spontaneous feeling, are woven with fine humour that is captured only in the expressions of the gaze. Those eyes that see everything, observe, question, query, consider everything, search for and expect answers, take the forms of complicated states of the mind ?perhaps because they look at the viewer through the eyes of a cute funny dog that is portrayed with both feminine and masculine references. We can also mention Nurdan Sezer (Dokuz Eylül University) together with these artists who introduce questions that relate to childhood at different levels, and construct a visual world that is woven with the images of the childhood. In her series of paintings entitled "Bir Varmis Bir De Yokmus," Sezer generally places images of small and young girls in imaginary spaces, which she constructs sometimes by manipulating the photograph, sometimes with collage work, and seems to be portraying the 'residue' of the subconscious; while considering the boundaries between dream and representation and reality. Elçin Ekinci's (Yildiz Teknik University) space entitled "Koza," seems to relate to the expression of fears, which in a way are pressed to the subconscious. "Curious to know about the inside as she wanders in an external body outside," Ekinci questions the individual's existential dynamics ?in her own words? "at the pre-lingual phase when no powering authority of any unit had yet emerged, when essence still remained inside," and seeks answers to these big questions in the space she constructs. Another work by Ekinci is the two small-size polyester objects entitled "Taciz-Aciz." In this work, Ekinci deals with the phenomenon of harassment and materializes 'anger like a rocket', which she proposes as the symbol of reaction to harassment, the contrary state of helplessness. Another young artist, Ender Gelgeç (Sabanci University), expresses the troubles of the individual who experiences inherent contradictions against social codes, rules, and habits, systems determined by certain power mechanisms. In his installation work made of paper that was first crumpled then smoothed, the young artist starts out from the meaning and references of the phenomenon of "legal document." While he deals with methods of values created by official methods such as archiving and storing, he also aims at questioning the authority of the gallery space. Another aspect in his work is an examination of the process, in which daily functional materials are rendered unfunctional and transformed into art objects. Such as his sculptures made of packaging nylon or toilet paper... Merve Sendil (Dokuz Eylül University), on the other hand, recycles waste material with different function. She participates in the exhibition with her work entitled "Atik Sehir," which she proposes as a project that creates a city from city wastes. While "Atik Sehir" is reminiscent of Istanbul, it also refers to the problems of urbanization which almost all big cities in the world and the Third World in particular face. In "Atik Sehir" that reveals a puny, vulnerable, distorted, and poor appearance, the cardboard boxes that are used as beds by the homeless, point at reality itself in the gallery space as part of an apartment building. Nazim Ünal Yilmaz's (Anadolu University) works woven with images of popular culture seem to exhibit a reflection of the fierce, eclectically urban culture. In his paintings entitled "Kardesler," "Travesti Hülya," "Çift," "Kahraman," "Yeniden Resim," Yilmaz examines the transformation, which the art of painting underwent in its current journey, the conceptual dimension it acquired. Yilmaz also investigates some symbols that transformed into visual codes. In his paintings, the occasional expressionist brush strokes that we see on the canvas are as much quotations as the images depicted. In this visual world, everything seems to be woven with the codes of popular culture, everything seems to create a realm that has a counterpart in the recollection of the individual who 'talks' and 'thinks' today's visual accumulations...

Ahu Antmen

Translation made by Mine Şengel