Love & Hope

LOVEIT TAKES TWO

Persistency Acrylic on Canvas,，40×26×68cm

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Relinquisher Acrylic on Canvas,，183x92cm

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Bonded Passionately Acrylic on Canvas,，122X122cm

LOVE - IT TAKES TWO — 7

What is more important than love? What is more fulfilling and thrilling than meeting one’s other half, the only being in the world that complements one perfectly? In his latest series of acrylics on canvas It Takes Two, Coplu celebrates the miracle of love. Using an extraordinary palette of bright colours, he stages two characters, a man and a woman, going through different stages towards har-mony. The artist is no naïf – he is fully aware that daily life is much harsher than the round and vivid universe he depicts in his work. But together these pieces form a manifesto. Coplu purposefully embraces the positive side of existence; his paintings are an ode to happiness, joy, humour and love.

The figure of the heart-butterfly is the leitmotif of this series. The wings of the colourful creature are shaped like that almost-universal symbol of passion, and each wing is totally essential to the other; the heart-butterfly couldn’t come into being with only one of them. Like love, it takes two to be. In Coales-cence of Lovely Souls, this motif remerges as the heads of two lovers sitting side by side. Together, they are one blossoming heart.

Cropping up in various forms, canvas after canvas, the heart-butterfly gives a strong pic-torial coherence to the series – and yet there is no feeling of repetition, as Coplu gives to his motif different roles and significations that change with each work. The heart-butterfly, embodying the yearning for the other, can become, for example, a vehicle. In Restless Soul, it is a hot air balloon; in Faithfully Voy-aging a man uses it as a vessel to navigate with his family the darkness of the night. In some other paintings, the heart-butterflies appear to be little companions to the lovers, a flock of friendly beings accompanying them in their quest for a meaningful life together.

It takes two – to love, to live. In this series, Coplu uses the relationship between two be-loveds as a metaphor for something bigger: the essential need that all things in life have for another in order to exist. ‘Everything takes two’, the artist told me. Like a lover needs her lover, fish need the sea; plants need the sun. Coplu clearly attempts to go beyond humankind’s particularities and touch on the intrinsic and intimate functioning of the world. Once again, the butterfly comes as an apt metaphor: by choosing such a short-lived and magnificent creature, Coplu not only captures in paint those relationships’ fleetingness, but he also alludes to the fragility of life – and the need to preserve it.

From Dawn to Dusk is the very first paint-ing Coplu made for this series. A man plays the guitar under a large tree that flutters with multicoloured heart-butterflies and his female counterpart stands nearby, listening. They both contemplate the ultramarine immensity of the sea as the sun sets. There is, in the piece, an inescapable feeling of calm and serenity, but also a sense of melancholy. The two characters don’t communicate at all with each other. They look afar, as if expecting something to come – or perhaps mediating over their past.

In the 1980s Coplu worked as a cartoonist in his native Turkey. For five years, he contrib-uted cartoons to the Turkish Daily News, and his illustrations have been published world-wide. The artist is now fully concentrating on painting, but something of cartoons’ visual efficiency remains in his pictorial language: a simple and accurate line, the directness of his images and their immediate impact. This impact is enhanced by the artist’s technique. Except for the backgrounds, all the sub-jects in Coplu’s paintings are applied on the canvas with a palette knife, a method which

LOVE - IT TAKES TWOBy COLInE MILLIArd

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gives them a very distinctive texture. They are almost in relief, more fully present to the view-ers with whom they seem to share the same space.

Clearly influenced with Coplu’s past as a car-toonist, the characters themselves contribute to a sense of intimacy between painting and beholder. The artist has made his Adam & Eve very mundane. They are plump, with round bellies and thick fingers – remote from the idealised figures usually chosen to embody the mysteries of love between man and woman. Coplu’s lovers have something of the caricature about them, and their imperfec-tions make them much easier to identify with. Moreover, as any of us would be, Coplu’s beloveds seem bemused by what’s happen-ing to them – overwhelmed, perhaps, by the strength of their own feelings.

Looking at this series, one could get the impression that these characters are always the same ones; that the works unravel as the different adventures of one single couple. A closer look reveals their differences, but together they nonetheless construct a meta-narrative embracing the development of a love affair. Each painting stands as a concise tableau, the embodiment of one of the myriad situations in which one can find oneself when looking for love or living in a relationship. And if there is an overarching feeling of joy in these works, Coplu doesn’t exclude more difficult aspects of love: the wait, the disap-pointment and the separation.

The Relinquisher has a male figure carry-ing a butterfly net. The sky is teeming with magnificent heart-butterflies but he ignores them and looks away, as if waiting in vain for the missing one. In Young at Heart, a woman and her child see the father flying away, from flower to flower, deserting his family for more enticing pastures. In Restless Souls, the man in the hot air balloon gondola is reaching out with his butterfly net, as if unsatisfied with the woman standing quietly by his side. Love can be as painful as it can be fulfilling, and Coplu pictures it in all its complexity.

In the end, though, happiness prevails. In Celebration of Faith 2, the lover has become a heart-butterfly himself. His wings are spread under his body like a luxurious carpet, more adorned and intricate than the ones of any other heart-butterflies in the series. He has become love and floats in bliss. ‘Dream is power’, Coplu told me. The artist may claim not to be interested in real life, but his paint-ings bring us an irresistible energy. Each one is an encouragement to adopt a positive outlook on existence. They depict an oneiric and symbolic world, which, in its own way, contributes to the transformation of ours.


Celebration of Faith I Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm

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Rooted Transformation Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm


Celebration of Faith II Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm

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Gathering Soul Acrylic on Canvas,，152x152cm


From Dawn To Dusk Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm

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Resurrection Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm


Glorious Metamorphosis Acrylic on Canvas,，183x122cm

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A Subtle Presence Acrylic on Canvas,，122X92cm


Evolving Nest Acrylic on Canvas,，152x152cm

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Pleasuring One’s Soul Acrylic on Canvas,，183x122cm

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Little Dreams - Big Souls Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm


Souls of Side By Side Acrylic on Canvas,，183x122cm

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Celebration of Unity Acrylic on Canvas,，122X92cm

Sheltered By Loving Souls Acrylic on Canvas,，183x122cm

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Watching Gracefully Acrylic on Canvas,，100x100cm

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Faithfully Voyaging Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm


Strong Bonds Acrylic on Canvas,，92x76cm

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Purely Soulful Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm


Nourishing the Souls Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm

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Playful Souls Acrylic on Canvas,，183x92cm

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Mutual Seizure Acrylic on Canvas,，100x100cm


One Life One Soul Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm

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Celebration of Depth of Souls Acrylic on Canvas,，183x92cm

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Anchoring Souls Acrylic on Canvas,，122x92cm


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Resemblance Acrylic on Canvas,，183x92cm

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from left:

Step By Step Forward Or Far Acrylic on Canvas,，276 x76 cm (Tryptic)


Reflections of Beyond Contradiction Acrylic on Canvas,，183x183cm

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Conformity of Intricate Souls Acrylic on Canvas,，152x152cm


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In Depth of My Soul Acrylic on Canvas,，76x76cm


Romantic Affluences Acrylic on Canvas,，152x152cm

Persistency Acrylic on Canvas,，40×26×68cm

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Young At Heart Acrylic on Canvas,，183x92cm

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Vigilant Consideration Acrylic on Canvas,，183x92cm

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Unquestionable Embrace Acrylic on Canvas,，183x122cm


Symphonic Soul Acrylic on Canvas,，152x152cm

Volunteered Captives Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm

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Coalescence of Lovely Souls Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm

HOPES & W O n d E r S OF EXISTEnCE

Wonders & Gains Acrylic on Canvas,，183x92cm

The Yummy Side of Life Acrylic on Canvas,，92x76cm

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Lucky Survivors Acrylic on Canvas,，92x76cm

HOPES & WONDERS OF EXISTENCE — 59

Coplu’s creatures appear soft and sweet but they grapple with the same existential con-cerns as us all. Like heroes from a fable, the challenges that these sympathetic creatures address are abstracted versions of common human concerns. Their dramas and joys are compelling metaphors for the fundamental issues underlining our universal struggle for understanding and happiness.

In his current series, Coplu casts his creatures within poetic scenarios involving oversized eggs. The eggs are seen either unbroken, as empty shells or presented like the delicious highlight on a breakfast plate. In both cases, the eggs serve as striking symbols of life’s potential and its mysteries.

The Turkish-born Canadian artist’s use of eggs reflects their power as symbols for creativity, purity, mortality and hope. As Picasso wrote, “When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait.”

Outside of art, eggs are simply the origin of all life. Children often encounter their first experience of birth by watching a chick hatch from an egg. We may intellectually under-stand the importance of eggs in biology but seeing birds’ eggs hatch makes the reality of birth immediate and intimate without forc-ing a clear confrontation with sexuality and the bloody biological reality of maternity in mammals. A chick popping out of an egg is as wondrous as magic. But it also educates children in the natural processes of life.

Coplu’s male and female creatures have simi-larly plump bodies but his females possess distinctly maternal physiques. They have full

bosoms and bountiful hair. They seem warm and motherly. Family and community are keys to Coplu’s universe. The eggs symbolize potential birth in these images just as they do for children. Their appearance is joyful. Although the shells are empty, Coplu’s creatures fill them with love and hope. This symbolic significance is addressed in many of Coplu’s egg images. In one painting, a couple sits together in an open eggshell. The egg itself has been removed and the couple chastely inhabits the shell but their presence together evokes their potential as parents.

In another image, the couple relaxes in an eggshell floating through space attached to a balloon of clouds. In Coplu’s work clouds represent dreams. In this instance, the clouds clearly represent the couple’s dreams and the power of their love to hoist them above otherwise rocky and bleak terrain. The sky surrounding them is dark and turbulent. The ground is dotted with eggs and hard hills. The earth beneath them seems precarious but the dreams uphold the nest that they create together in the eggshell. It is a lovely and reassuring vision of domestic security and romantic contentment.

A comparably mournful image shows the same couple rests within their egg but it is no longer aloft. It is grounded and rooted in the dense earth. They watch two floating clouds and appear to contemplate their relation-ship. The sentiment is tender, not bitter. But a sense of potential loss is still gently con-veyed.

Eggs’ potential as symbols of hope and dis-appointment is illustrated in a dramatic paint-ing by Coplu in which one of his creatures pushes a whole egg up a mountain while

HOPES & WOndErS OF EXISTEnCEBY ANA FINEL HONIgMAN, ART CRITIC

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others watch. The far side of the mountain is crowded with forgotten eggs. The gesture seems futile and curious but the evident determination of the worker creates a sense that the activity itself provides potential sol-ace and self-discovery, in keeping with some interpretations of the Sisyphus.

One of the paintings evokes a proverb from Coplu’s native Turkey, which translates into: “Today’s egg is better than tomorrow’s hen.” As the proverb makes clear, an egg has less objective value than a hen but it is still superior to the fantasy of a hen in the future. However, the existence of similar proverbs throughout multiple cultures demonstrates mankind’s susceptibility towards investing in fragile and false hope.

The positive implication of this quote is that hope can transcend reality. This sentiment possibly inspires the group of creatures gath-ered on a series of rocks watching another of their kind travel the sky in a vessel with an egg as it sails. Ironically, the egg is sunny-side-up. In this state, it will clearly never

become a chicken. It’s potential for giving life has been arrested. As food, a cooked egg can contribute to another creature’s nourish-ment but it cannot independently become an autonomous thing. However, it’s appear-ance hovering above the heads of Coplu’s creatures still generates obvious hope within them. They gaze at it with understandable wonder and envy their brethren flying under its steed.

Although eggs represent many aspects of our emotional and intellectual investment in life’s potential, eggs also signify the limits of our understanding of life. Eggs’ simple but significant symbolic meaning is summed up in the eternal conundrum: which came first, the chicken or egg? Like Coplu’s charming characters, this riddle’s apparent simplicity belies its hidden profundity.


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Admiration of Mysteries Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm

opp: Existential Responsibilities Acrylic on Canvas,，150x100cm


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Instinctively Influenced Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm


Unpredictable Beginnings Acrylic on Canvas,，76x76cm

Faith In Mysterious Wonders Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm


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Joyous Existence Acrylic on Canvas,，183x92cm

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Circumstantial Existence Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm

opp: A Giant Call Acrylic on Canvas,，183x122cm


Lost In Absurdity Acrylic on Canvas,，92x76cm

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Pre-reflexive Ambition Acrylic on Canvas,，92x76cm


Determined By Surrounding Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm

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Carrying A Mutual Hope Acrylic on Canvas,，92x76cm


Mysterious Appearances Acrylic on Canvas,，92x76cm

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Consideration For A New Beginning Acrylic on Canvas,，76x76cm


Nothing Matters Acrylic on Canvas,，76x76cm

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Voyagers of Wonders Acrylic on Canvas,，183x122cm


Distinctive Odds Acrylic on Canvas,，122x122cm

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Envious Escape Acrylic on Canvas,，183x92cm

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Inexorable Entity Acrylic on Canvas,，183x122cm


Quest With Merits Acrylic on Canvas,，183x122cm

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Persistence of Hope Acrylic on Canvas,，152x152cm


Explorers of Wonders Acrylic on Canvas,，150x100cm

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Surrendering Hopes of Liberty Acrylic on Canvas,，183x92cm

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Contradiction Acrylic on Canvas,，100x100cm


Liberation With Hopes Acrylic on Canvas,，183x92cm

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A Wish To Hold Acrylic on Canvas,，150x100cm


Wonders & Astonishment Acrylic on Canvas,，122x92cm

LOVE & HOPE COPLU

first published 2010 byOde To Art Contemporary ode to art raffles city252 North Bridge Road,Raffles City Shopping Centre, #01-36E/F,Singapore 179103Tel: +65 6250 1901Fax: +65 6250 5354

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

book designInteractive Armada

photographygulhan gulsun

measurements of artworks are given in centimetersprinted and bound in singapore

isbn978-981-08-8010-1

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ISBN 978-981-08-8010-1

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Love & Hope