Yüksel Arslan: Sui Generis

Sui generis is a Latin phrase that means “of its/their own kind”, “in a class by itself”, therefore “unique”. Creative arts, for artistic works that go beyond conventional genre boundaries.

It is futile to attempt to register Yüksel Arslan’s works in art historical methodologies; not by its contents nor its materials and neither their intentions. He found ways around classical categories to arrive at those that now come to be extremely personal to his works. He used words and materials that translated his understanding of the world and the large body of work which he arranged according to and in parallel with his life go beyond conventional genre boundaries.

To understand those categories, one must understand Arslan’s approach to artmaking. A skilled and absolute reader, in his student years Arslan sought refuge in world classics. His earliest drawings depicting curious animals and insects were exhibited in 1954 and the sales generated income which he then spent on more books. This would be repeated many times over in his 60 year long career. He would return to drawing to satisfy his thirst for reading. His readings were then transformed into his subjects and to categorize his knowledge, he sought to define these works on paper and combining the word “art” and the French affix “-ure,” they were named “arture” in 1961. As an artist by the book in the most literal sense, he referred to a book of painting from Anatolia to generate dyes by ancient recipes that lasted over centuries on paper. Contrary to technologies that advanced paints such as oil, the recipes called for soap flakes, herbs, tobacco, tea leaf juices, soil, honey, egg white, fat, bone marrow, urine and blood. Those tried-and-true materials allowed for his understanding of the world to be engraved on paper.