Exhibition Information

The journey to happiness
2020 Acrylic on canvas 130.3 x 97 cm

Ocean view
2020 Acrylic on canvas 41 x 41 cm

Tree of life
2020 Acrylic on canvas 130.3 x 97 cm

			2GIL29 GALLERY presents MY Q’s first solo exhibition, What are you doing the rest of your life? The title of the exhibition is a question to the modern society in chaos and the artist suggests the audience to think deeper and look back at our lives. Humanity moves forward by continuous developments and progression. In the process of achieving, society has lost and forgot many things in life and built new rules and outlines. In the modern society, the standards and boundaries are continuously blurred out and revisit definitions of many studies and areas. As a result, humanity forgets the importance of many things including emotion and senses due to comfort that the saturated and blurred world offers. This exhibition aims to agitate the numb senses and rather than suggesting solutions, the artist questions the audience and hopes to come up with answers together.

My Q is a well-known singer-songwriter who already released total 184 songs including 8 studio albums, 4 Ep albums, and 54 singles. My Q started his career in 2007 by dropping the album Style Music. The artist is a multi-disciplinary artist covering production, creative direction, cinematography, song writing, arrangements, and mixing. The artist performed over 300 times in multiple tours and live shows. Music and Art is different in a sense because music is auditory and Art is visual. However, the two different studies have a universal purpose. It fulfills the desire of humanity to produce and create and at the same time, it is a portal that links the artist’s pure ideas and emotions to the public. It has been 15 years since his first album drop in 2007. Pure expression and the effort to visualize emotions clearly appears in the artist’s studio. The raw brush marks show the purity of the artist which is closest to pure creation. After the artist debut as a musician, over 15 years he crashed into numbers of struggles and success. Therefore, these rich experiences played a huge role in finding his identity in his artistic practice as well. The shift from a musician to a professional artist happened during the nationwide tour in 2019. The artist desired to perform in a new environment. He did not satisfy with the practical stages and started stage designs. He filled the performance hall with letters and drawings. In this process the artist felt a huge spark in his heart and started to make paintings. In the repetitive day to day, the artist picks up what is interesting and transforms it into something special and meaningful is parallel to the emotionally toughing melodies and lyrics in his music. As he gently hits every note in his music, every single sound that the piano creates resembles the rhythm in his painting. He creates visual melody with in his painting.

The artist’s process of making painting resembles the process of making music. The artist’s unique painting technique ‘Dub da’ is a process of overlapping layers over and over again. This is similar to the process when creating music. First create rhythm with drums and bases and creates melody with instruments like piano and guitar. This method is applied in his painting practice. The artist builds up diverse texture by painting and splashing colors with palette knives, brushes, paper, and hands. After this process the artist covers the whole canvas with a background color. Even when the painting is covered with a different color, hint of the underpainting remains. We all have memories and mistakes we want to hide that we made in the past. It could be a crucial mistake, the moment of pain, and embarrassing past. However, it is impossible to hide or cover it up. Even if we try our very best to fix or hide, it appears in a form of shape, emotion, habit, or behavior. The repetitive motion of the artist can be viewed as a process of a wound covering up and this process makes his art more valuable. Therefore, every single expression is important in the artist’s practice. Moreover, the importance and hope of creating something new can be observed in his work.

The paintings that will be presented in this exhibition divides into 4 categories: New normal, Poetry, Song and Self-denial. Through 4 different series, we are able to understand the message and philosophy of the multi-disciplinary artist. The New normal series questions the modern society about the new world we currently live in through unique patterns and symbols within the painting. Poetry is a series of work that visualize lyrical lines in poems by abstraction using paint on canvas. The Song series is a body of work that is created with the same emotion when it comes to music making. Moreover, the Song series is a reaction painting to the music that the artist listens to in the process of painting. Finally, the Self-denial series is split into 4 different works, Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, and myself. Rather than it being a religious painting, it is made with the desire of faith and trust. The artist aims to express his blooming emotions through repetitively applying layers of paint covering up what is underneath. When we are looking into the artist’s work, we can discover the evidence of deep agony. We will be able to have a glimpse at the new occurring regulation and balance. Moreover, the artist’s paintings throw questions and eventually help the viewers to come up with solutions. The artist mentioned that he has never imagined exhibiting works as a painter or an artist. However, it is unavoidable to fall in love with his paintings that are another form of his music. You will be able to see 80 paintings which is closest to the purest form of Art at 2GIL29 GALLERY in March 2021.