July 29, 2026
Rüzgar Polat’s ongoing exhibition at Muse Contemporary Art Gallery, The Shape Between, is on view until August 15, 2026. I had the opportunity to see the works together with the artist, and the tour evoked new questions and ideas about the artworks and the concepts of void, transformation, and contemporary aesthetics. I couldn’t help but ask the artist extra questions as a continuation of my visit to the gallery to take a comprehensive look at the young artist’s practice, which surprisingly spans almost two decades.
Rüzgar Polat
The exhibition opens with the Masks series. The series forms the backbone of this exhibition. What was your motivation to focus on masks? What made them significant for you?
The process of anonymizing and masking the human face and body began during my years at the Fine Arts High School. My intention was that, in a world where the face is the primary focal point, neither identity nor the ideas and narratives I wanted to convey would dominate my figures in the same way. I approached this tension by making them feel as real as lived experience, yet as artificial as masks. That was how the scenes I wanted to create began to emerge. As time passed and my knowledge and observations expanded, I realized how much space these ideas occupy in life itself. Since then, they have become increasingly central to my work.
Rüzgar Polat, Other Masks series.
This compelling series depicts perfect facial forms, reflecting the search for ideal beauty today, such as looksmaxxing. The trend has violent elements that almost allude to sculpting on a live body. What do these masks suggest? Is this a connection you recognize, or does the series stem from a different concern?
Artificiality is an important aspect of my work, but what truly interests me is the violence embedded within it. Here, artificiality operates on both a visual and conceptual level, with the two reinforcing one another. I focus on people who wear these masks because of evolving systems of thought and the identities they unconsciously assume. In one way or another, all of us wear these masks because of life’s circumstances. Over time, they begin to take hold of us so completely that they even start to cover our consciousness. In my paintings, this manifests itself through metal fragments piercing living bodies.
Along with faces, the audience also comes across perfect bodies, alluding to chiseled marble statues from ancient Greece. I find this interesting: first, the bodies felt like another mask that could be used as a body cover, and then these images felt like a cyborg costume, with voids between different parts of the body. What is significant for you with these body studies? Are there any art historical references to this choice?
I’m glad the works made you feel that way. I enjoy the associations they evoke in people and the different ways they are interpreted. Throughout art history, the body has long been treated as the carrier of ideal proportions, harmony, and perfection. I wouldn’t say that I consciously reference Ancient Greece. I think of bodies as masks as well. Within each one, there is an unseen person who truly gives it life. The forms I idealize also contain many absences. In my work, I am more interested in the body’s own fragility, its transformations, and its state of incompleteness. For me, it remains a space that is constantly being reconstructed. I want to create an anonymous structure that never reaches its final form.
I also wonder about the process of deciding the incomplete parts. Do you plan your compositions beforehand, or do they reveal themselves during the process?
Before I begin painting on canvas, I make sketches on paper. The areas that will remain empty are already determined at this stage. The subject I want to convey gradually takes shape around the figure on paper. Afterwards, the body and the void become a threshold that gives existence to one another.
Shallow or depthless parts of the bodies bring movement to these paintings. Even though these figures are on a static, flat surface, it feels like watching the subtle formation of the remaining body parts, or maybe the dissolution of these bodies, resulting in transformation. The series sits between painting and moving image. What role do the incomplete parts play in your work?
I approach the incomplete areas of the body through both sharp edges and homogeneous surfaces. In doing so, I depict the disappearance of my figures in two different ways. The unfinished areas, interrupted contours, and voids are just as important to me as the main subjects of the painting. They are where I see the ideas I want to express, the things I wish to see, and the other thoughts the painting generates in me. Naturally, these spaces evoke different associations for each viewer—just as they made you imagine the gradual formation of the rest of the body.
Also, I find this challenging the fundamental premise of these images: keeping the perfect form forever, like a sculpture. It made me question the possibility of preserving the ideal form. How do you think about beauty?
Beauty is something without fixed boundaries in my mind; it is a subject that constantly expands as new perspectives are added to it. Although I have a stable side, I am equally excited by change and new possibilities. And yes, I do have a tendency to preserve the forms I consider beautiful and everything that comes together under the idea of “beauty.” At the same time, I am interested in making visible the transformations that beauty undergoes and the traces it carries over time within my paintings.
Your paintings made me think of certain art historical references. Such as the work titled Untitled, which reminds me of Malevich’s Black Square. Whereas your painting depicts an off-balance black square that introduces another sculptural body. They made me think whether your painting will embrace more abstract elements in the future. Can we consider these images as another phase of being between different painting styles?
Malevich’s Black Square and Yves Klein’s Blue Monochrome were works that I encountered in childhood, and that genuinely affected me. Large, powerful fields of color have always fascinated me and shaped my visual world. They helped me find my own language of expression. I approached the square within the painting as a way of moving beyond the frame offered by the canvas and instead containing the narrative within a frame of my own making. In fact, abstract elements are already present in some of my compositions and paintings, and they will occupy a much larger place in my future work. I simply haven’t exhibited those works yet. I’ve always been drawn to presenting what I want to express through different visual languages and combining them within the same work. From my perspective, every new direction I take marks the beginning of another phase.
There used to be a tendency to exceed the surface of the canvas. However, the majority of your figures take up less space. I want to return to my previous question, as this placement makes me feel like, instead of exceeding the surface, it is pushing against the two-dimensional nature of the canvas while preserving its sense of flatness. Was this intentional? Is there any conceptual essence of embracing such a style?
Yes, it is entirely intentional. What matters to me is not whether the figure extends beyond the surface, but the space it occupies within the void and the role it plays in my visual language. For me, the surface is not simply a ground on which the body is placed; it is also a space where the void becomes visible and enters the narrative. That is why I conceive the composition through the relationship established between the figure and the surface. The empty spaces surrounding the figure, the blocks of color, the boundaries, and the unfinished areas are not merely formal devices. They make visible the silence the body carries, its unresolved emotions, its ambiguity, and the tension between presence and absence. Conceptually, this is where my interest begins. Rather than serving as a background surrounding the figure, the void becomes an infinite conceptual surface upon which my visual language is constructed—and into which the viewer is also invited.