Pickapok | nmeltemelmas.com

BRAKING NEWS!

Pickapok has now moved to its own place. You can visit it at pickapok.com.

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Spacetacular

Spacetacular was created as a tent, space within space. Inside the tent, there are assemblies made from found objects, photographs, pictures, and drawings. I would like to thank again Bilge Hasdemir for giving the name of the project

installation, Gent Belgium, June 2012

Facetacular

FACETACULAR is a two-story installation presented in three distinct sections. The first part features paintings integrated with found objects. On the second floor, the exhibition continues with lightboxes crafted from found and discarded materials. The third section consists of LOOPTACULAR: a kinetic installation that bridges a modified slide projector with a vintage turntable, featuring a continuous 35mm film loop approximately 4 meters in length. Gent Belgium, 2013

3. Göz / 3rd eye

Object consisting of horse chestnut and paint in a ceramic altar.

Desert Hero

Shortly before the global lockdown, during one of my last trips, I collected pieces of driftwood washed ashore. At that time, I had no way of knowing the global scale of what was about to unfold. Soon after returning home with these fragments, the world shut down, and these pieces remained confined with me.

For me, one of the most destructive effects of melancholy is the perception of the outside world as a place utterly devoid of meaning—an empty void. This manifested in my mind as a recurring metaphor of a 'desert': a barren landscape that offered no sustenance for creativity or growth, and in which I was trapped. Being a stranger, an 'other' in such a desert, felt like isolation within isolation.

I created this work to honor that desert—the period of time I was stranded in, and the internal landscape I eventually had to cross to find my way back.

Handfull of Paintings

During the pandemic, I found myself returning to my home studio, searching for a way to cope with the restrictions, confinement, and the many challenges of that time. During this period, I took on the responsibility of caring for the ducks in our garden. When I visited them, I started collecting their fallen feathers and eventually bound them with bamboo sticks to make unique, characterful brushes.

For a long time, I spent every day alone with these brushes, black ink, and various types of A6-sized paper. I began practicing what could be called 'automatic drawing,' trying to go beyond the personal reflections of our shared global crisis. Building on my earlier work with pareidolia, this project centered around themes of alienation, otherness, isolation, and a deep sense of loss. It became a physical expression of melancholy—an embodiment of that deep, irreversible feeling I couldn’t quite name while living through it.