Moonlight PiecesWorks by Ömür Tokgöz

Article by Feyza Ozgundogdu

EiN'c AS BEALT1FÜL AS THE 14TH DAY OF THF M O O N ' is a n e x p r e s s i o n u s e d inTurkish to describe beauty. With this expression, the full moon is associ-ated with a bright and restful face. The light of the full moon emerging in

the sky on a cloudless night is fascinating for many people. The moon openhand-edly sends the light it receives from the sun, as if it is a gift. Although we areaware that the light does not originate from the moon itself, when watching itwe attribute the light to the moon and admire it. The burrowed light has a quitemodest and peaceful level and whiteness. The light of the moon softiy covers thenature it illuminates, as a white veil.

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This moorüight influence, which we observe in theworks of most of the ceramics artists who are pas-sionately committed to translucency, shine with thesame modesty in the sections of fine porcelain works.We know that these works do not radiate. Yet thelight that comes from the source is absorbed by theform with the deep breath of the porcelain and gainsits own beauty, character and voice. The light nowbelongs to the porcelain and we perceive that whilethe work manifests its strong character with all of itselegancy, it also expresses how fragile it could be.There is calmness in the sound of this light, it sofflyasks you to listen to its secret and the observer getscloser to the piece to hear this whisper. The impres-sion left by the translucent and superfine porcelainbowls of Omür Tokgöz is no exception.

We witness this poetic moonlight glare in theworks of the artist. These pieces are so fine that theyseem to challenge their material reality. Revealingtheir existence within a dimension between materialand abstract, these works are the present milestonesof the search for achieving a plain style, as far as pos-sible from colours and secrets.

Tokguz's acquaintance with the art of ceram-ics happened past her engineering education andcareer. While originally being a textile engineer, shestarts to develop an interest towards painting anddiscovers clay when she, by coincidence, attends aceramics course after 2003. With the strengthening ofher interest, she leaves her engineering occupationbehind. For the first couple of years she concentrates

Facing page: Blue (Detail). 2010. Porcelain, slipcasting, unglazed,coloured by cobalt oxide and fired to 1300"C.

lix 12.5,14.5 X 10.5 and 10x8 cm.Above: Optical. 2008. Limoges clay, slipcasting,

unglazed and fired at 1225"C. 14.5 x 10.5 and 10x8 cm.

on research and implementation in order to get toknow ceramics closely. Stating that she needs toknow ceramic clay well in order to be able to expressherself well, Tokgöz starts to question the character-istics, limits and possibilities of this material. The art-ists states that, by the end of this technical researchprocess she starts to believe that in fact material isnot that important. She points out that the techniquesand materials employed are similar to a languageand what matters is not which language we speak,but what we actually say. "But, of course you haveto know your material well. This is something differ-ent. If you know it well and you can understand itslanguage you give to it a new idea/meaning."

After setting up her own workshop in Izmir in2006, Tokgöz understands that the only way withwhich she can express what she wants to say is por-celain and she starts experimental works with porce-lain. "I noticed that I was dreaming to see translucentthings. I was more interested in playing with lightand shadow. I was more interested in working withtranslucent objects." Thus, having set off on thesearch for moonlight, the artist starts her studies ina field where the resources, such as providing por-celain material and suitable technical equipment,are limited in Turkey. Having started experimenting

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Top: Untitled 2. 2009/2010.16.5 xlO cm.Above left: Untitled 3. 2011.14 x 10 cm and 10x8 cm.Above right: Metamorphosis 1. 2011. 14 xlO cm and 10x8 cm.All are porcelain, slipcasting, unglazed and fired at 1300°C.

with Limoges as the first clay she caa acquire, shealso eaters into theoretical research and learns aboutthe characteristics of other translucent types of clay."The second serious challenge after material provi-sion was yet to come to light. The porcelain clay that1 touched for the first time in my life bore no resem-blance to those I had experimented with till then, notto mentioa the fact that haviag worked with por-celaia clay for oaly three years, my experience aadknowledge were limited."

Tokgöz initiates her works with small bowl formsaad works for a long while to solve the deforma-tion problem that occurs at high temperatijres in thekila. In time, the artist finds the way to express whatshe wants to say with the language of this waywardclay and becomes capable of producing fine bowlswithout the problem of deformation. In the mean-time she attends Sasha Wardell's workshop on por-celaia production aad learns various techniques thatwill contribute to her works. "It was aot before sixmoaths whea I discovered what to do and how to doit. As for the entire work to reach the result I desired,1 believe it took a year. Yet, the truth is, the relationwith clay never eads. Still, every day I leara aaothercharacteristic of it."

We can see that the light Tokgöz wanted to achievewhen she first set off, led her to experience a proc-ess where courage, patience aad care coexists. Or,maybe it is the artist's search for calmaess concern-ing life itself that led her to produce these fragileand plain works: "All my inspirations are the result

of my feeling about the time in which we have beenliving. Maybe my subject is modernity. 1 am tryiagto uaderstand its meaning. I feel there is somethingwrong ia our lives. We coasume everything. This islike being bliad. Are we loosiag our connection toand control over our lives? Curreatly, 1 like workiagwith plaia thiags. No colour, ao glaze. Simple formslike bowls. But translucent and fragile. I think, thisis the result of the image pollution of everyday life."

Regarding her creations, the artist makes thisexplanation sincerely. One can clearly see that herceramic production takes shape as calm porcelains,a tendency that came along when she realised thatshe feels squeezed under the rapidly changingvisual bombardment that we face every day. "So Ilike using simple forms such as bowls which havechanged only a little for thousands of years. In addi-tion, I like working with repeated forms. They arethe same as each other in general and at the sametime they are subtly different from each other. It islike a questioa of compariag the meaaiag of 'interac-tion' with 'copy-past'. And finally, they are alwaysfragile pieces. Maybe, this is an irony of the consum-ers' life."

Her work titled Optical is one of the examples thatdemonstrates Tokgöz's capacity ia usiag Limogesporcelain with control. With perfect symmetry, thesurfaces of these bowls are gradually thinned withgeometrical divisions. Just as a circle of light aroundthe moon itself, these circular thinnings create hardto believe depths on the ultra-fine sections of theporcelain and they open gates. Being one of thefirst works of Tokgöz that we have started to see ininternational exhibitions. Optical was exhibited inthe 1st International Triennial of Ceramics UNICUM09

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exhibition in Slovenia. We can see that the artist'sdesire to reach whiteness in time leads her to workwith more sinter and whiter porcelain. In recentyears, the artist has started to work with harder por-celain types.

The work titled as Untitled 2 brings forward a qual-ity of volume, beyond the view of three fine bowls.These three forms seem like three flying balloonschallenging gravity, they have either just touched theground or are to rise at any moment. As this illusion isachieved by filling the sections, which raises doubtsthat they actually have any thickness at all, with thewhite light, it is also supported with the dynamicview of the bowls. With this work, the artist demon-strates that she succeeded in masterfully using thelanguage of hard ceramic. The whiteness and trans-lucency that she achieves have added a distinctivedimension of sound. The relationship of these workswith the atmosphere is closer and stronger. It is asif the volumetric value of these images has no rela-tion with earth anymore. The piece titled Blue, withwhich Tokgöz was awarded the FuLe Prize in the3rd ICMEA International Emerging Artists Competition,also manifests the same effect. The bowls are so fineand fragile that, handling the bowls, one can doubttheir existence. This is more than just proof of exper-tise, but a challenge. The point in question here isthe questioning or demonstration of the thresholdsof perception. This challenge is even more evidentin the work titled as Metamorphosis 1, which wasexhibited in the 3rd International Triennial of SilicateArts. How can the bodies of the two bowls that donot belong here, yet are merely visible for us to per-ceive, be so thin and still have the changing powerthat transforms them? Only a living organism can beso resistant in order to continue its existence.

We coincide wifh the same dimension of life alsoin Untitled 3 which was chosen to be exhibited inthe Taiwan Ceramics Biennial 2012. These two bowlscannot simply be described as porcelain clay shapedthrough casting, but a seashell that builds itself

Above: Relativity. 2011. Porcelain, slipcasting, unglazed,coloured by cobalt nitrate. 1300°C. 14 x 10 cm.

Below: Ömür Tokgöz in her studio.

within the aquatic life, or a piece of light that shapeditself as corals do. On the other hand, with the piecetitled as Relativity, which was exhibited in the 9thInternational Ceramics Competition in Mino, the artistshares a special silhouette with us. On the surfacesof the two bowls with equal dimensions, we comeupon the historic city of Istanbul, or according tosome with an oriental image, depicted in a perfectlyplain style. These images seem to be embedded inthe memories of the bowls. While on the left bowl, itis the cobalt nitrate applied on the lip that constitutesthe sky of the picture that is depicted with a singleline; on the other bowl we see the negative image ofthis composition. Here, the view makes a referenceto a slice of time that is long past, as if the image ishidden behind a cloud of fog, or as if it is a fadedold photograph. This time, the cobalt solution usedseems to form the sea in the scenery. The bowl on theleft is as though it describes the image of old timeson the right bowl, to the present time. The bowls are,once again, ultra-fine and filled with light.

Ömür Tokgöz's porcelain works aestheticallybestow upon us the truth of fragility and the senseof calmness that she believes in, adjacent to the noisyimages of the daily life, sobright that sometimes theymake us squint. The lightborrowed by the fine andsnow-white delicate bodiesrefreshes us and covers oursouls as a light and white veil,as does the moon.

A Feyza Cakir Ozgundogdu is an Assistant Professor at the FineArts Fducation Department of Ondokuz Mayis University,Samsun, Turkey.

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