After graduating from the Royal Academy in The Hague in 2013, Alican Şahinler has continued his studies, focusing on conceptual and art-historical connotations of Abstract Art in his studio in Istanbul. His art practice includes painting, animation, intervened-objects and installation.

“Creating something new is highly unlikely! But maybe a movement, an action against the direction of the flow of time… Instead of examining the subject-matters that are fashionable, it is important to focus on the ones that are overlooked as if the discussions on them are set to stone.” In line with his thoughts, in his exhibition “Facing the Canvas” (Istanbul, 2016) Alican Şahinler proposes a visually, intellectually and even objectively never-ending exploration by altering the all too common perspective on contemporary art. The artist aims at approaching the “as-if-unchallengeable” abstract art, especially the Suprematism, De Stijl and Constructivism from today’s perspective and actualising it through his reinterpretations. 

Playing with De Stijl’s principles, Alican Şahinler alters its three colour-principle, which constitutes of red, blue and yellow by adding an extra color, the color “Green” which is defined in digital world’s RGB scale. For him, the color green also represents “the nature which is plundered by today’s world”. He furthers his explorations and extends De Stijl’s limited vocabulary of form that merely constitutes squares and rectangles through his geometrical forms that include horizontal and vertical lines as well as diagonal and circular forms.

Alican Şahinler’s paintings put forth a representative form of almost a pictogram-like alphabet by utilizing visual capabilities of pure abstraction. The single “letters” in his alphabet, such as plus, minus, star, and directional-arrows, start forming compositions that evoke movements, dialogues, confrontations, and even, social dynamics, while carrying the visual taste of Constructivism.

In his “canvas-objects”, Alican Şahinler reinterprets the act of intervening directly to the canvas itself, the “invisible” material of Painting, by the Modernist masters such as Fontana and Hesse. His approach reaches its climax by his use of contemporary materials such as gas-concrete, isolation materials, carton egg containers, packaging tapes and electronics parts and so on, which are used in construction industry, electronics, shipping and packaging today. “For centuries, Painting has been seen/experienced on the front surfaces of the canvases, which are accepted as the communicative surface” says the artist, who reversed, cut and pasted, pilled up and built, and painted the canvases to convert them to sculptural objects. Alican Şahinler evaluates his relation with the canvas as “a return to the raw form of classical art object like a root analysis”. He shared his canvas-sculptures that create an “unexpected encounter when the canvas is not taken as a mere surface or tool but as a subject by itself” in his exhibition “Facing the Canvas” for the first time with the audience.