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ALİ BALKAN

Ali Balkan ([| ˈæli ˈbɒlkən ]born 11 February 1974) is a Turkish painter and poet.

Ali Balkan, born in İstanbul,1974, known for his painting series “İstanbul, the city of fairy tales”. Regarding to this series, sub series already exhibited are “City of ships” and ”Open sea”"Voyage to Azores",  where as the subseries  “The competition”  two years ago announced to be exhibited on  February,2014. Till now, his exhibited 4 series; are: “İstanbul, the city of fairy tales”, “Mood of the city”,””Before the city”, and “3010”. His 5th series, “Returning to your own league” is  announced to be exhibited on  February,2014 as well.Interwiev with Ali Balkan.(13.9.2012,Euro D)

“ When you see the ferries, the image of snow as an aesthetical reality integrating with the city, the paintings where historical aspect of the city is used, the surrealistic scenes where the tides of the Bosphorus ebbing in a futuristic approach like in Orhan Pamuk novels, the abstracts, the overview of Istanbul and the images of the city, the mechanical city and world perceptions, and the richness in variety and layers provided by different series of paintings complementing each other, you think it’s just as well that this productive artist is presenting his hundreds of paintings in such a big exhibition. Because each of these paintings introduce a thesis both in terms of series and individually. It’s not only a thesis driven by an idea, neither is it only the dreams and fantasies of an artist. It is also a pictorial thesis. Naturally, the artist pursues dreams and fantasies as well, reflecting his city in the dimensions of image reality, variety, heaven and hell. Ali Balkan’s paintings include both city images that reflect the heavenly beauty of the spring, and images that may be associated with hell where the fear of death and loneliness grasps the whole city. A rich and original expression of Istanbul supersedes in the artist’s pictorial adventure, yet he has truly abstract paintings still evoking the city, Istanbul” wrote Ümit Gezgin(Ph.D.), art critic from İstanbul on Ali Balkan’s art in 2011.