Interview Hüma Birgül – EN

THE NEED OF ACTION
Raymond Cuijpers – Hüma Birgül

Hüma Birgül
Hüma Birgül

RC
You throw the paint – acrylic- on the canvas that is lying on the floor. When did you start doing that?

HB
I don´t remember exactly, was around 2007 I guess…

RC
Why did you start doing that, did it happen during the process of painting? I think it’s quite an important move, also for the content of your work. Can you tell me more about the thoughts/feelings you had when you first started throwing the paint?

HB
I really don’t remember the moment of that change, was around 2006-2007, I was already throwing and leaving forms to go on their way before, but I was also touching the canvas anyway, now I don’t touch at all… In our free
space, there is no place for limitations and if we do it is not realdream anymore… I really dont know how it happened…
Maybe it was my life in London for 2 years between 2005-2007… those two years I changed from oil painting to acrylic too. Before, somehow I was denying acrylic with the prejudgement of the non-intense effect and no smell of it. Then after I moved to london, I was living and working with many people at one space, so I started acrylic also at home not to bother housemates. That
changed a lot in my paintings and mind, many things interfere and change when your life, your conditions are different than before… also in London, I realised that I was an ok artist. In Turkey I was somehow feeling a minority complex because of foreign artists. And then I saw that an artist is an artist everywhere. Just conditions and opportunities are really different according to countries…maybe my Life in London helped me to set my mind free and then I also let the materials free…

RC
Don’t you lose control by not using brushes, or is that a conscious step, and how does the fact that you don’t use brushes influence your approach of the painting?
(* I have to correct my question: you do use brushes, but you use them as
‘dripping sticks’, in your paintings there is no visible brush stroke…)

HB
Yes, I only use brushes or other things to drip or make line or spots etc… The thing is that I am willing to free the materials, the paints, to the process of organic forms being shaped, finding their way. Even if I can guess what the result will be, it doesn’t always happen the way I expect. Life is the same, even if we want to control everything, it goes its own way. We are just trying to find our balance in life between facts.

RC
That’s right, finding the balance between control and chance. A painting now is the one thing in which you are able to control things, even if you are throwing the paint and chance is a big factor, you still are controlling the image be it making choices in color, intensity, shape, size, layers. Did you ever decide a painting was finished after one ‘throwing session’?

HB
Yes… what a feeling!

RC
As I come from the world of soccer, I compare the painter with the coach/the trainer, the painting is a match and the paint and all the other painterly means are the soccer players. There are coaches who coach their players hard and intensely and there are coaches who don’t want to have full control but who steer their team by giving them subtle directions.
Those kind of coaches take more confidence in the abilities of their players. Can I say you are more like the second kind of coach? And what kind of game would you like your players to play?

HB
Yes, I am probably the second one… I would first like them to show me how they would play when they are on their own, without me. And then if we all agree, I would offer my suggestions… though probably in the end no football league would want to risk working with me…

RC
I also saw some pictures of you working on very fluid paintings in sort of wooden boxes. It looked to me like a performance.

HB
Yes, it was a performance with composer Michal Osowski, ( September 2011, Witte de With Festival, Rotterdam, Gallery Blaak).
Michal came to me with his project and asked me if I would like to paint in front of an audience. He is doing music with a computer program which is being stimulated by colors and moves. So I suggested something else
to him and then he asked me. I know the traditional 500 year old marbling technique called EBRU. It’s a marbling technique and it used to be practised for making the inside covers for books I once showed him in a small container how it works. We tried it and saw the effects of it with the music program. It worked well and he wanted to make it bigger. So we did a 2 hour performance in a big container at the gallery. Of course that was a modern interpretation of an old technique. It was a nice experience. The marbling technique is always calming an meditative… a bit difficult though. I guess
people liked it too. In the end everyone was invited to give it a try.

http://www.trackingrotterdam.nl/water-painting1/

RC
Here you enter another level. I still see painting as an utterly individual act. When someone is watching while you are painting you never can get a 1 on 1 connection with the canvas, with the painting, with the inner you. What’s your view on this? And do you save the results, the actual work (in this case the marbling piece)?

HB
During that marbling technique performance I rejected first (the idea of painting in front of an audience(??) ). And then I thought it would be a good experience to train myself in front of the audience. The marbling technique is such a mediative thing that I really forgot where and with who I was during 2 hours. In the end a friend came to say that I should stop… Normally I would take prints, that time audience, colleagues, friends, kids took some prints, I don’t know what happened to those prints…

RC
The act of painting becomes somehow more theatrical in your performance(s). Or not so?

HB
I am painting like I am on my own, I don’t think it would be theatrical, I don’t think about that.

RC
Because of the audience and the live experience you possibly had to be more focused and the painting became more intense?

HB
Performance and painting process are different things… I don’t see my process of painting as a performance, I dont want to share that moment with anyone… The process of doing a performance is also a psychological self
convincing preparation I think… a different thing. Kind of a responsibility to the present… for both the performer and interacting audience… It is difficult as well… a weird dimension is being added…

RC
Your paintings look like the result of an action, maybe they are the action. How important is for you that action, or that feel of action?

HB
Action is my basic need, starting point, deciding point… so that’s important, I am needing that action…

RC
When do you decide a painting is finished?

HB
It never finishes actually. On the other hand I think it is finished when the image/work finds a parallel balance in my mind, and/or it gives a sign that ¨it is enough, I cannot get more¨.
For everybody that decision would be different. I think this is the difference between artists. Every artist is him/herself, depending on the decision, on when they decide to finish. We all do the same things, just where we decide to stop is different, i would say. That’s why I am me, you are you etc.

RC
What for you are the criteria for a finished painting, in other words: what do you want to see in your painting, or what do you want to show with your paintings?

HB
I want to show my paintings, yes, I need to feel that I am existing. I need reactions. I would like people to like to spend a lot of time next to my works which would mean that they want to think.

RC
How would you describe your state (physically and mentally) while working on a painting?

HB
I think I feel like I am fighting, I would describe it as a big challenge, a tough chess match. It is a thinking process, discovering process, a philosophical process. I would also say that all works are open diaries. We describe ourselves, our way of dealing with life, with our existence.

RC
What do your paintings tell about your life, and to what degree you wish to show your way of dealing with existence in a painting?

HB
Life is a challenge… with endless combinations of balance between possibilities…

RC
Do you feel connected to Pollock, Frankenthaler and other Abstract Expressionists?

HB
I never thought about that although this is the first thing many people ask. I like Abstract Expressionism very much though.

RC
I ask this question because I think it’s important to be able to formulate how we – ‘The Act of Painting collective’ – distinguish ourselves from wild painting in the fifties and the eighties.
How do we take that kind of painting to a different level, where do we aim at in the future?
I think it’s important to make that statement, to position ourselves, before someone else does it, or no one does it at all…

HB
I just move with intuitions. Probably there is common social memory.

RC
How do you manage to keep the canvases open and not let them turn out to be muddy swamps?

HB
Sometimes they do turn to muddy swamps, you just don’t see them most of the time. I change or do something else out of it. Nothing goes well all the time. We prefer to show nice, good, successful photos in our albums most of
the time, in life I mean, no?
Also, I work on many canvases at the same time and i work layer by layer so
most of the time I wait till 1 layer dries. I am impatient and if I want to continue to work and I don’t want to lose the freshness of the working process while waiting for one to dry, I work on another one…

RC
I recognize your impatience, and sometimes this habit of being impatient makes me destroy the painting I am working on. I work until there is a moment in which the painting seems stuck. But, then, in a state of intuitive consciousness, you find a way to open up the canvas.
Do you have the same kind of experience?
In a way The Act of Painting is about failure too, so we try not to show the nice picture, it’s more about showing the true picture.

HB
Yes, I could come to the point to destroy my work sometimes. As my life, as
I do everything in my life. Sometimes everything collapses and then I try to
be reborn from my ashes. But anyway I think we are not brave enough to show all in the end. I mean during our exhibitions etc, artists are now quite polished…