New English Ahmet Günestekin. Antik modern = Antique Moderne., text by: Gülseli Inal; translator: Ayperi Okur, Ist., 2007. Paperback. Pbo. 4to. (29 x 23 cm). 212 p. Color ills. In Turkish and English. 1250 copies were printed. "Ahmet Günestekin (born December 22, 1966 in Batman, Turkey) is a Turkish painter. He was born in the workers' camp at Garzan oil field in Batman, where his father was employed. He was the second youngest child of a seven children family. His passion for painting has been with him ever since his childhood. He was awarded his first prize in third grade when he was nine years old. His acquaintanceship with oil colors occurred at the same time, and in addition to this, his interest in literature appeared at this young age. Since that time, the artist has kept on working permanently. When he reached his high school years, he staged his first personal exhibition in the gallery at his school. Shortly after his graduation, he went on to study in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul. After a while he dropped out of this programme, but later went on to complete his graduate studies at the Anadolu University's Department of Management. For a period, he went into business, but soon returned to painting. In 1997, Günestekin established his first studio in Beyoglu and from there staged numerous personal and cooperative exhibitions. In the wake of his exhibition ¿Colors After Darkness¿, which he opened in 2003 iat Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM), he gradually began to release his name into the world of art. Through a great number of personal exhibitions, Günestekin¿s works of art now take their place in prestigious domestic and foreign collections. Ahmet Günestekin, whose signature of his great achievements is his distinctive language, has also attained great success in the design field. His art: Antique Modern While it exists as a definite and specific feature in modern art expression, form in post-modern times is observed and experienced as fragmented and imperceptible through a detached yet consecutive visual experience. Modern means: integrity, continuity, order, nature, form and, most importantly, simplicity. Post modern, on the other hand, is about pieces, disarray, detachedness, context, complexity and, most importantly, essence and ethnic culture. While modernism offers a unifying closed-circuit form mechanism, what is dominant in the art expression of the post-modern era is anti-form and a fragmented structure. (We designate the post-modern era as gaining clarity by 1990). The principles in a modern work of art can be listed as goal, distance, sovereignty, depiction of existence, metaphor, depth, interpretation, the designated, main code, narration, paranoia, the origin, metaphysics, and transcendence. What comes to the fore in the post-modern era, conversely, are characteristics like game, anarchy, process, puzzle, anti-thesis, nonexistence, disintegration, personal language (idiolect), irony, ambiguity, and immanence. From this perspective, Ahmet Günestekin's art expression bridges both the modern and post-modern approaches; whilst it harbors the modern characteristics and displays some features of the modern, and displays some features of the modern in terms of the space he reflects, it also offers a refuge for antique characteristics in terms of its themes. In actuality, Ahmet Günestekin, as an artist fascinated by the antique worlds, stands contrary to Modernism. However, the integrity and unity he reflects on the canvass are the principles of the modern work of art and they greet us as the most important principles that the artist gives the utmost importance to in composing his work. On the other hand, Ahmet Günestekin, who displays a completely post-modern attitude, also crosshatches the archetypes of the antique worlds, and transforms the ruptures of time - anachronisms - by greeting time perception, thereby transforming."
