penguin is not a friend, only a sinner, 2023: a reading in seven lenses
Acrylic on canvas, 120 × 120 cm (47 ¼ × 47 ¼ in). Painting by Yiğit Özen.
At a Glance
Up at the narrowest part of the body two dark slits have gathered; the face is there, like a small knot fastened to the top of a mass far greater than itself. The great arcs descending below read as an embrace, and also as two taut wings guarding the chest; this double reading sets up the painting's central tension. The arms are open but the body will not close, its centre is hollowed and a dark green seeps from there. There is no line one could call a contour, the figure emerges from the residue left behind by movement. The brush is five centimetres wide, and with a single stroke coming from the shoulder it has opened a fan from the top edge downward, no arc returned to. At the knot in the middle the acrylic is laid on in the density it left the tube, yellow and petrol green mixed together while still wet; this can only happen within minutes, so that region of the painting was finished in a single hurried sitting. In the earlier works of the series the figure was built from small clusters of cells; here that unit has grown, the logic of accumulation giving way to a single stroke.
The title pulls the portrait elsewhere. Penguin, it says; not a friend, it says; a sinner, it says. The flightless bird spreading its wings is a useless gesture, a creature that takes the angel's pose yet cannot rise into the air. We see this stance, arms flung to either side, at the airport, at the stadium entrance, in the corridor of the police station: show yourself, prove you are hiding nothing. The body that submits to being searched is already counted half guilty. The broad halo around the figure resembles the ring of light of the saints but disperses on the right without closing, like an unratified office.
The right half is empty. No one is there, no witness either, no trace remains here of those small spectator figures from the other works in the series. It is as if no one wishes to stand in the same frame as the branded one, and the canvas, left half empty, says as much. Below, two thin yellow lines stand in for legs, not touching one another, too hesitant to bear a body of this breadth. The upper part is swollen, the lower undone. The palette is cold and in close values, those two lemon-yellow lines the only high note carrying beyond all the silence. From a metre and a half all the arcs gather into a single turning motion, up close they scatter into some twenty separate strokes. The line where the mouth should be is closed, no defence is being made.
Form and Composition
The strong centre of the square format has been deliberately emptied, the mass heaping up in the left third while the right strip is thinned to a surface without build-up. The balance is set up by the dark band descending on the left pushing the mass inward like a clamp, and the eye, finding no resting place in the void on the right, turns into a closed ring.
The square format shifts the figure not to the very centre but to the left half. Because the side lengths are equal, the centre is normally a strong point of attraction; here it has been emptied out, the mass pushed to the left. The figure's vertical axis sits on the line a third of the way in from the left of the canvas. The right third, meanwhile, is a light-value surface, one the brush has only grazed, without build-up. That void does not tip the painting to the left, because the dark band running down the left edge works like a clamp and pushes the mass back inward. The balance is set up as follows: on the left a narrow, dark strip, in the centre a broad, light heap, on the right a thinning area.
In the upper region the strokes open outward from a single gathering point. About a quarter of the way down from the top there is a knot, and the strokes are flung out from it in a fan shape to right and left. This radial rhythm marks the head line but does not close the silhouette; the tips of the fan blend into the dark ground in the upper left corner and end there. There is no separate line to call a contour. Form appears where the light mass pushes the dark mass, and melts where it cannot push it. The distinction between figure and ground collapses especially in the upper left and the lower central region; near the bottom edge it cannot be told whether the dark patch belongs to the figure or to the ground.
Two large arcs describe the body. Descending from the centre downward, these arcs close like a pouch or a skirt and join at the navel line, then split in two and descend towards the bottom edge. Two thin yellowish lines cross the bottom edge and go outside, that is, the crop cuts the legs. The point of cutting is about one fifteenth of the way in from the bottom. This cutting compresses the figure into the canvas and enlarges its scale.
The horizontal force is weak. Almost all the strokes are either vertical or slanted; the most pronounced horizontal is the band of cramped short strokes at eye level. There the value suddenly darkens and the painting's only sharp focus is formed. The eye enters to the left of that band, follows the fan and rises, drops down with the dark band on the left edge, slides right over the lower arcs, and on reaching the empty area at the right finds nothing to hold onto and turns back. The circulation is a closed ring; it goes as far as the right edge and stops there.
The scale hierarchy works on its own, with no small spectator figure at the edge. Instead, in the middle of the left edge there stands a pale pinkish patch, like an unfinished unit not attached to any mass. There is one more of the same pale patch in the lower right quarter, but there it is buried beneath the ground, reading only as a bump on the surface. The distance between the two patches is the painting's widest horizontal opening, and no one uses it.
Colour and Light
Two thin lines of lemon yellow are the only loud voice within the field of pale green and beige standing at close values to one another; despite their scarcity they shout because they have stayed clean. The brightness comes not from light but from the thickness of the paint, and the pale salmon pinks along the left edge only just break the absolute coolness of the palette.
Two thin lines of lemon yellow descend towards the foot of the canvas; that is the loudest place on the palette. The rest is pale. There is a broad field that moves back and forth between a greenish cream, milk-blended pistachio, dirty beige and olive green, and all of these stand at close values to one another. The difference between them is about that of a washed shirt and the same shirt washed once more. It is for precisely this reason that the yellow shouts. Its quantity is small but it has stayed clean, no other colour has been laid over it, and it goes on standing at the saturation with which it left the tube.
The second voice is petrol blue. It emerges as dark turquoise patches at the centre of the figure, under the arms, and in the flung cluster of brushwork at head height. This blue is not pure; mixing and mixing with the cream it has fallen to grey green here and there, and in some places it has joined with the dark layer beneath it and come almost close to black. The darkest point of the painting is already there, in that blue well left beneath the chest. The lightest point is the almost white mint field at the upper right. The distance between the two is surprisingly narrow. The whole surface is played within a range of three or four registers, and those two yellow lines are the only thing that spills outside this range.
The ground goes darkening from right to left. The right half is a thin, opaque, faintly misty light mint; brush marks remain but the colour stands all of a piece. The upper left corner is a dark olive verging on brown, almost muddy. This transition does not let the edges of the figure behave the same way. On the right the boundary of the body merges into the ground and disappears, on the left the dark corner sharpens those same cream edges. That is, a single cream reads like two separate colours on the two sides.
The source of the light is not within the surface. There is no cast shadow, none at all; the colour shines by itself. Where the cream and dirty white stand thick as dough a brightness has gathered, and where they are laid thin and let the green beneath seep through it dies out. The brightness seems to come not from light but from the thickness of the paint. Along the left edge, towards the bottom, pale salmon pink appears in two or three places. Small patches, left half-finished, covered over afterwards. Without these the palette would have stayed entirely cool; cool despite the yellow, because there is green even inside the yellow. The pinks do not warm it on their own, they only give notice that the cool is not absolute. At the middle right, at the very centre of the mint field, there are a few more light pink and earth patches that have escaped from the body. Why they went there is not clear; they have been left without being wiped away.
The general feeling is damp. The colour of laundry that has not dried and of misted glass. At the lower left one of the yellow lines is cut off before it touches the ground, the brush having finished the paint there.
Iconography, Myth and Title
The figure taking the frontal pose of the blessing saint, through the word sin in the title, steps out of being a portrait and stands before the accusation. As the flightless bird's spreading of its wings turns into a wasted gesture, the halo behind it disperses on the right, announcing an office not confirmed.
In the middle stands a being with its arms opened to either side, looking as though it were built out of feathers. At face level there are two dark slits; these are read as eyes, and beneath them a horizontal line takes the place of the mouth. The body narrows as it descends, and instead of feet two yellow lines touch the ground. The stance is frontal and close to symmetry. In iconography this stance has a name: the pose of the figure who blesses or is blessed. The arms are open, the palms not visible, but the movement of opening is there.
The title pulls in a completely different direction. It says penguin, it says not a friend, it says sinner. In the tales the penguin mostly stands on the clumsy and endearing side; the bird that cannot fly, the little man in a tailcoat. Here a sentence has been built that refuses that endearment. A flightless bird spreading its wings can also be read as a useless gesture. A creature that takes the pose of an angel but cannot take flight. The word sin, for its part, pushes the scene toward the courtroom or the confession; what we are now looking at is not a portrait but a body standing before an accusation.
The area beneath the wings is not empty. The vertical patches there stand both like the fold of a robe and like a railing. Around the figure there is a wide ring, a band that turns outward and opens from the body. This ring may be the counterpart of the circle of light behind saints; but it does not quite close, it disperses on the right side. The mark of holiness has been given, then seemingly left half-finished. A halo left half-finished means an office not confirmed; like a proclamation cut off in the middle of its ceremony.
There is no definite answer to the question of whether the scene is a rite or an accident. The things that stand on the side of the rite: the frontal stance, the symmetry, the ring, the order descending from above. The things that stand on the side of the accident: the unravelling of the figure's edges, the scattering of the feathers, the feet seeming to slip rather than press on the ground. Perhaps the chosen moment is that brief interval between spreading the wings and falling. Not the moment the bird takes flight, but the moment it understands it cannot. That interval is seldom painted in the tales, because it carries neither triumph nor catastrophe; what it carries is realisation.
In the upper left corner there is a dark area; the small patches descending from it stand like an audience. They do not turn into distinct figures, yet they give the feeling that this is a scene being watched. The third element of the schema of judgement is thus completed: the accused in the middle, the verdict in the title, the witnesses at the edge. On the layer of message, this can be read: the form of the holy icon has been taken and an animal that is no friend has been placed inside it. The sinner in the guise of an angel is one of the oldest tensions of religious painting. The fallen angel too has wings, and that wing once opened in just this way. Here the tips of the wing have dispersed, the body has mixed into feathers, yet the gesture of opening stubbornly continues. The line where the mouth should be is closed; no defence is being made.
Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious
The small face, the narrowest place of the body, oscillates between arms opened for an embrace and wings protecting the chest, and this double gesture sets up the tension of the painting. While the green leaking from the middle thins the boundary between inside and outside, the pale pink patches on the left edge stand like the return of a repressed figure.
At the top, on the crown of the body, sits a small knot; two dark patches and, wedged between them, the trace of a beak. The face has gathered there. Against the large mass beneath it, it remains too small, like a piece attached afterwards. The narrowest place of the body has become its most heavily loaded place. Whether the eyes are open or half closed is not easy to tell; the thin light lines falling across them cover the gaze. There is something looking there, but it does not fully show itself. The broad folds opening out to either side of the face stand in for ears or hair, swelling the surround of the head. A small face has been set inside a frame far larger than itself.
The body will not close. The broad arms opening to either side stand like someone about to embrace. The same movement can also be read as two wings tensed to protect the chest. This double reading is, to my mind, the real tension of the painting. Opening and being protected are pressed into a single gesture. The middle of the mass has been emptied, and from there a dark green leaks out. The wall between inside and outside seems to have thinned there. The figure has an inner cavity, and that cavity is not closed. Its edges are not distinct in any case; the brush marks spill out of the body and merge into the background. It seems not even to know where it ends.
Even setting aside the word sinner in its title, there is something to do with guilt in the image itself. Guilt most often comes with a gaze, with the feeling that someone has seen you. Here the one being looked at is the figure, but the figure too has turned towards us. The broad, bright, almost empty area on the right is unsettling for this reason. There is no one there. And yet a place has been left empty, as though someone were to come and sit there. A place left empty is most often a place that has been lost. We do not know for whom it was set aside.
Below, two yellow lines stand in for legs. Thin, hesitant, two lines that do not touch one another. These cannot carry a body of this width. The task of bearing has not been solved, it has been left where it stands. The sense of not being able to stand upright sits exactly here. The upper part is swollen, spread, puffed up; the lower part has come undone and scattered. This is how it goes in the figures small children draw too, the head grows large, the legs stay like sticks. That childhood residue has not been erased here.
On the left edge stand pale pink patches. From a distance they are like the remains of another being. It is hard to say what they are, perhaps another figure painted over. Covered over but not entirely gone. This is how I think the repressed returns; not as a clear form, but as a staining left at the edge. This is why the left side of the painting stands heavier than its right.
Society, Power and Technology
The arms of the body stamped with the label of sinner take the stance of the airport and police-station search, and obedience, ceasing to be a choice, becomes buried in the daily routine. The leaving empty of the right half shows how the surrounding ring thins when a negative epithet enters circulation.
A pair of eyes sits up high, everything else has scattered. There is no whole that could be described as a body; things that stand like a shoulder, things that stand like an arm, things that stand like hair have run into one another, and the only point of purchase left is those two dark patches. We are looking at a being that has been called a sinner. Assigning a name is not a cost-free business. To count someone not as a friend but as a sinner is to strike him off the list of those you deal with and enter him on the list of case files. The decision has been made, but the person decided upon is still there, on his feet.
The arms seem to be spread out to the sides. We all know that stance: the stance a person is made to take at the airport gate, at the stadium entrance, in the police station corridor. Show yourself, prove that you are hiding nothing, then you may pass. I am speaking of an order in which a body that has consented to being searched is already reckoned half guilty for having consented to be searched. Everyone who passes through the gate is a suspect; after passing through he goes on being a suspect, he has merely been logged. The strange thing is that no one counts this stance as coercion any longer. In the morning on your way to work you scan your card at the turnstile, at midday you pass under the camera, in the evening your phone already reports where it is. If you are asked to spread your arms you spread them, because you know what happens to those who do not. Obedience here has ceased to be a choice, it has become buried inside the daily routine.
The right side is empty. No one is there. No witness, no one standing beside him, not even a small figure placed there to watch from the edge what is going on. That no one remains around the person who takes the stigma is no accident. When a negative epithet enters circulation about a person, the ring around him first thins, then scatters; no one wants to appear in the same frame as the stigmatised. Here half the canvas does this, by staying empty.
The word sin once belonged to a religious court. Now it works in other places. The man whose credit score has dropped is a sinner too, so is the employee with a bad record, so is the user whose account has been closed. Scoring systems do not judge a person, they score him; but the result comes out at the same door, the door closes in his face. No one explains to you what it was that lowered the score. An algorithm finds you risky and you do not know from which side to object to this, because there is no person before you to object to. The penguin is a flock animal; there is nothing a penguin cast out from the flock can do on its own. The title's refusal of friendship says exactly this, to my mind, that belonging is something that can be taken back.
The eyes look straight ahead and are slightly narrowed. Most accused faces look like this, a gaze prepared for defence but not knowing to whom the defence is to be made. There is no one looking back across from him, only we who are outside the picture.
Art History and Comparison
Jorn built his masks by piling the paint on; here there is no piling, and because the underlayer seeps through everywhere the figure stays hanging within the surface. The icon's frontal gaze has been achieved not through disciplined drawing but through the coincidence of two accidental patches, and the tradition's most expensive discovery has been repeated by accident.
Two dark patches, upper centre, are wedged between two brush-curves leaning against one another, and look out from there. What we read as a body is no more than long arcs the arm has thrown in a single stroke; a mane flung outward at shoulder height, a loop below that tries to close and cannot. This method of making a figure is familiar in the history of painting. In the CoBrA circle, Asger Jorn would often build his masks in a single pass, piling the paint on fast, leaving the face as the residue of the stroke. The difference here is that there is no piling. Where Jorn fills and thickens the surface, this canvas stays open, the underlayer seeps through everywhere, and the figure, instead of rising onto the surface, hangs within it.
Within the series' own calendar this work stands at a late point, in 2023, and at large scale. In the same hand's works of 2019 and 2020 the figure was built up by the coming together of small bubbles, of clusters of cells; to find a body one had to follow dozens of tiny units. Here that unit has grown, and a blow as long as the arm has taken the place of a single cell. That is, a shift has been made from the logic of accumulation to the logic of the single stroke. In Antonio Saura's imaginary portraits there is a similar compression, the face set up with a few sweeps; but Saura always presses the face towards a scream, whereas the face here is not shouting, it looks rather as though it has consented to scatter. Ömer Uluç's coil-upon-coil ribbon figures also come to mind. In Uluç the ribbon turns into a shell and closes the figure off; here the ribbon does not close, it scatters towards the edges.
The tradition it rejects is clear: the habit of building the figure with contour. Caricature and icon both stand on the same side in this matter, both first draw the boundary and then fill in the inside. In this canvas the boundary is never drawn, the figure is the sediment that movement has left behind. Against that, it has taken something from icon painting: the arrangement of a face that looks out frontally, settles at the centre, and meets the viewer eye to eye. That gaze, running from the Fayyum portraits to Byzantine panels, is fixed by a disciplined drawing, whereas here it comes about through the coincidence of two accidental patches. That the gaze can be obtained by so cheap a route repeats, by accident, the tradition's most expensive discovery.
The problem twentieth-century figurative painting inherited lies exactly at this point: is it possible to arrive at a figure by breaking down a body, and where will the breaking down stop. Post-war European painting always asked this question through the face, because the face was the last place to surrender. This work too enters the same question, but it carries the argument on not through harshness but through slackness; nowhere is there a cut, a tear, a trace of rancour. The right half has been left almost empty, the figure has not used half of its own canvas. Of those small toy figures that in other works of the series sit at the edges and watch what is going on, there is no trace here; the only thing that looks is the face in the middle itself.
Material, Gesture and the Viewer's Experience
The fan-shaped combings are drawn in single moves coming from the shoulder, and where the bristles part the brush gives away its five-centimetre width. The dry-dragged patch in the right third turns to smoke from a metre and a half and to the grid of the canvas weave from forty centimetres, making the same surface two different materials at two distances.
The fan-shaped strokes opening downward from the top edge were left by a broad brush drawn fast in a single direction. The places where the bristles part from one another read plainly; as the paint ran low the brush behaved like a comb on the surface, each bristle leaving its own thin strip. Looking at these comb marks I think the brush is at least five centimetres wide. The moves are not short. The arm came not from the elbow but from the shoulder, because the arcs cross a quarter of the surface in one breath. None of them was returned to. Had they been corrected after drying, a hard border would remain at the edges; here each strip thins at its tip and ends of its own accord. Even as the brush lifted from the surface it kept its speed, so at the finishing points there is a tail, not a drop.
At the centre, where the knot resembling two eyes sits, the consistency changes. The acrylic there is not thinned, laid on at the density it left the tube, ridges a millimetre or two high built up at the points the brush pressed. At the crest of these ridges, while the paint was still wet, yellow and a dark petrol green have mixed into each other; neither has lost its own identity, they have only blurred where they touched. This can only happen within minutes. Acrylic is not a generous material; after fifteen minutes that mixing does not occur, a border line appears. The blurring here tells me that this region of the picture was finished in a single sitting, and a hurried sitting at that.
The right third is left with an altogether different treatment. There the paint has been opened out generously with water, almost as a patch. The brush was held horizontal to the surface and dragged bone dry; the weave of the canvas caught the paint at every loop, while in the hollows the ground stayed bare. Up close the square by square grid of the weave shows. Move away and the same region turns to smoke. The same surface behaving like two different materials at two different distances is the most concrete event of this picture. The two yellow tails running down towards the lower edge, meanwhile, are laid in undiluted paint with a fine-tipped brush, in a single pull. Their fluidity is apart from everything else; the paint there sits on top of the surface, it does not go into it.
A one hundred and twenty by one hundred and twenty square: standing in front of it, it fills everything above chest height. This measurement matters, because the knot at the centre stands exactly at the height where a person's own face comes. Looked at from a metre and a half, the arcs all gather into a single turning movement. Come within forty centimetres and that turning falls apart, leaving some twenty separate moves each drawn on its own. On a screen you cannot see this second state; the screen always gives the state from a distance. In front of a work of this size a person cannot take it in at a single glance even if they want to, they must turn their head to let the eye roam; the duration of looking is not chosen, it is imposed by the size. On the left edge there is an area the size of a palm that the paint never reached; the primer stands there in its own matt greyness and reminds you where the picture began.
Back to penguin is not a friend, only a sinner
