With its series titled “Reflex”, Canan Tolon is opening her 9th solo exhibition at Istanbul Galeri Nev. Tolon, who held her first exhibition at Galeri Nev twenty years ago, is now adding a new series of work she produced in 2011 to her earlier “Baskı”, “Kaza Eseri”, “Blind Thrust”, “Everything’s Honky-dory”, and “Glitch” series.
The recent series produced on wood panels with oil paint is actually a continuation on a theme the artist has been working on for over twenty years. It is possible to discern the imagery and the signs of all her work from the beginning of her career combined in this series.
The “Reflex” paintings realized after series such as “Glitch” and “Break-in” can be regarded as a new window opening onto the artist’s world which has no beginning and no end.
As its title suggests, the “Reflex” series is open to interpretations and associations based on its definitions such as “reflection”, “recurrence”, “involuntary action or response”, “reflected image”, “bend”, “retreat”, and “balance”. These aspects of Tolon’s work we have become familiar with constitute the structure of the “Reflex” paintings.
On this new series of work Canan Tolon says: “This series is based on repetition. When a movement creates a repeated moment with the use of muscle and eye memory, this moment ‘in time’, it creates also produces an idea. When a word, a movement or an image is repeated ad nauseam, its meaning is exhausted; in this process its form is altered and a pattern appears. A line of recurring static images, just like a film ribbon, can give us a sense of movement and even produce a sense of progression or a sense of infinity like those in the reflections of facing mirrors. But this movement can only happen in our imagination. Just as black and white images give us the impression of true testimonies. If a world without colors is impossible why does it seem more convincing, more real and closer to us? If we keep searching for a point of reference within the repeated acts, how can we avoid moves that keep us balanced and in control?”