s(t)lop, 2026: a reading in seven lenses
Acrylic on canvas, 55 × 75 cm (21 ⅝ × 29 ½ in). Painting by Yiğit Özen.
At a Glance
Coral-red notches ranged inside an open mouth are the only hard place on the surface; everything around them is opened out with milk, and on a palette the black never visits, lilac, mint, mustard and baby blue rub against one another at the same pitch. That forty-centimetre area, where the paint is not diluted with white, holds the painting's lock in its hand. The mouth is near the centre of the body, slid lower than where it ought to be, as though it had gripped and not let go rather than bitten something. From beneath the turquoise bar in the middle, five or six thin runnels have seeped down twenty centimetres and stopped, tapering to a point; the canvas was standing upright at that moment. Everywhere else is thicker, half-covering layers laid one over another, each hazing the one beneath; the surface is illuminated without direction, like noon light behind frosted glass.
The left half is taken up by a creature: a bird's head, reds ranged like teeth along its jaw, a half-open wing from the back, a body gathered from bubbles. At lower right a far smaller figure kneels, extending its hand toward the mouth of the large one, something pale at its tip. The classic set-up of the peasant carrying feed to the dragon. But the boundary between feeder and fed is indistinct; the small figure's body is made of the same bubbles, the one that sates and the one that swallows fitted onto the same face. The title splits a word in two and superimposes the command to stop upon the leftover feed given to the animal; someone keeps carrying, someone keeps swallowing, the wish to stop is wedged into the same phrase.
Within the rectangular frame at centre right there are two eyes and something trying to be a face, the scribbles beneath it resemble a line of writing but cannot be read. This is the posture of someone seated before a screen; no one checks any more whether the face is real. On the left it is unclear whether the mouth is eating or vomiting, both at once; that chain in which the machine produces the text it swallows and what it produces is swallowed by another. The edges are melted, it cannot be told where one ends and the other begins. The second box at upper right could be a railing or a server rack. These small boxes do not intrude on the main figure's event, they are there like the marginal spectators of a medieval manuscript; but they share the same surface, the same paint, the hierarchy is gone. The newest work in the series, 2026; having arrived at the single stroke, the artist has returned to the old bubble unit. Below on the ground an empty plate, the small figure not looking at it, its face left turned to the screen.
Form and Composition
The two small rectangles on the right edge turn the empty strip into an edge column, while the horizontal projection reaching out from the head, as the composition's only proper horizontal, goes all the way to the right edge. The plate form at the bottom edge disperses the contour and figure and ground pass into each other there, and the eye turns clockwise and closes.
Along the right edge two small rectangles hang one above the other. One is just inside the upper right corner, filled with short vertical units resembling teeth; the other is right at the right mid-line, a panel with two eye circles inside it. Both are independent of the large mass, units that have stayed within their own frame. Their scale is perhaps a fifth of the main figure's head. Because of these two small units the right strip does not stay empty; it becomes a kind of edge column.
The main mass covers the left two sections. In the upper left quarter there is a head, oval, with a spiral eye ring turning inside it. A long projection comes out of the head to the right and, crossing the painting's horizontal mid-line, stops a hand's width short of the right edge. This projection is the longest single force; it is the composition's only proper horizontal. Above and below it everything is slanted or round. The body is built from three or four bubbles touching one another, and the centres of the bubbles make a chain, shifting slightly to the right from top to bottom. The last link of the chain rests in the lower central region, and there the scale shrinks.
On the left edge there is a layered fan like a wing. Its lines are parallel, all running from lower left to upper right. This parallel series is the painting's most regular rhythm; after it, no repeating unit is this disciplined. The outer edge of the fan almost sticks to the left edge, leaving a finger's width of space between. The mass does not breathe there.
The bottom edge cuts the figure. Two vertical extensions we might call foot or leg disappear about a tenth of the way up from the bottom, and after them comes a horizontal plate form. That plate covers the whole lower band and makes the place where the figure sits uncertain. There is no boundary between the plate and the figure; the contour disperses right there and ground and figure pass into each other. The same collapse is present in the lower right too, where a curved line spills outward but it cannot be told what it belongs to.
The value range is narrow. Almost everything is light; the only place we might call dark is the purple-grey region at leg level in the lower left. This narrowness flattens the depth, and the overlapping layers stay on the same plane. The eye starts from the eye in the upper left, goes right along the long horizontal projection, snags on the two eyes of the panel at the right centre, drops down from there and passes to the curve in the lower right, and from the lower left it returns to the start again along the parallel lines of the wing. The route is clockwise and it closes. In the left corner of the top edge a thin pink strip remains, looking as if it was left unpainted.
Colour and Light
In a milky pastel palette from end to end white has been mixed into every colour, and no depth is left for the eye to hold on to; the warmth is carried by patchy mustard fields alone. Because the short coral red notches at mouth height are the only place not thinned with white, that narrow strip holds the lock of the painting in its hand.
Nowhere is there black. The dark, too, is so scant it might as well be none. The only tone that descends is a grey blue verging on purple at the lower left, and even that stays only a little below the middle register. The palette is milky throughout. White has been added to every colour, to some of them two or three times; lilac, baby blue, mint and lemon all look as though they came out at the same proportion of milk. On such a surface it is normal for the eye to find no depth to hold on to, and here too it finds none.
The warmth is carried by mustard alone. The vertical scrubs that begin from the upper middle and hang down to the right edge are a dirtied ochre; grey has got into it, the blue beneath has seeped through here and there and pulled the colour slightly towards green. These mustard fields are patchy, discontinuous, with the ground showing through between them. Like old varnish on the wall of a room. They sit in exact opposition to the lilac and light violet beside them, that is, yellow next to purple; but because both are lightened to the same degree they do not collide, they rub against one another more than anything.
The only place that keeps its saturation is the short coral red notches ranged at mouth height in the centre. Just above them there is one more small terracotta patch. This is the one place on the whole surface where the paint has not been thinned with white; and so an area of forty centimetres holds the lock of the painting in its hand. The narrow candy pink strip along the upper left edge is a second warm point, but it is far more docile, left almost like the priming of the canvas.
The turquoise lines look like the last to be laid. On top of the pastel dough beneath them they have stayed sharp and wet, their edges undispersed. The same turquoise repeats in the wing section of the figure, in the horizontal steps in the centre, and in the curved arcs at the lower right. This colour is the coolest among the pastels, and in the painting cool does not mean distance; the turquoise comes forward, it does not go back. The light seems to come from everywhere. Because it has no direction there is no shadow either; what separates the figure from the ground is not a difference of darkness but only the colour of the line. The white over the wing has been laid thick and has covered the lilac beneath, and so that spot shines like paper. It resembles a noon light behind frosted glass; the source has stayed outside, and only its scattered part has come in.
The face boxed in at the middle right is paler than everything around it. Its inside is a dirty cream, the frame surrounding its outside a pistachio green. The two eyes inside the box are purple, and that purple is the most saturated bluish tone in the painting. At the lower right, somewhere near the edge, there stands a small violet curl, with no other colour laid over it.
Iconography, Myth and Title
The face of the small figure holding out food to the monster made of parts has been erased, taking it out of being an individual and reducing it to the role of the one who brings. When the command stop in the title and the feed given to the animal merge in the same word, the border between the one who carries the feed and the one who becomes feed disappears, because the two bodies are made of the same bubbles.
A large animal covers the left half from top to bottom. It has a wing, its beak or jaw is open, and inside the opening red zigzags are lined up like teeth. Its neck is long, its body gathered from round masses, and below two legs come down to the ground. On the head there are rings like several eyes; which one is the real eye is not clear. This description stands close to the monster made of no single piece in folk tales: its wing from a bird, its jaw from something else, its body from an uncountable heap.
At the lower right there is a much smaller figure, standing as though kneeling and stretching its hand toward the mouth of the large one. At the tip of the hand there is a thin, light-coloured thing. This is the classic setup of feeding scenes. The villager bringing food to the dragon, the sacrifice offered to the creature in the cave, the portion left at the mouth of the temple. The small figure's face cannot be made out, and this takes it out of being an individual and reduces it to its role: the one who brings.
At the middle right there is a quadrilateral frame, and inside it a white face with two eyes and a mouth. The yellow edge of the frame makes it look like a plaque hung on the wall. We can read this as an icon panel or as a screen; both do the same work, that is, they fix the distance between the one who looks and the one who is looked at. The horizontal strips beneath the face resemble lines of writing, but cannot be read. At the upper right there is a second box, and inside it are purple fingers or teeth; it stands both like a cage and like a mouth. The votive plaques hung in holy places are lined up side by side like this too; each carries a wish or a debt. The ones here show neither wish nor debt, only a looking face and a holding hand.
The parenthesis game in the title lays two words on top of each other. On one side the command stop, on the other the leftover feed given to animals. When these two words merge in the same scene, this reading opens up: someone keeps carrying feed, someone keeps eating, and the wish to stop it is squeezed into the same sentence. The border between the one who prepares the feed and the one who becomes feed is uncertain; the small figure's body too is made of the same bubbles as the large one's body.
What is chosen as the narrative moment is neither attack nor ending; a frame taken while the feeding goes on. The mouth open, the hand outstretched, the morsel not yet arrived at its place. This in-between moment is the most tense place in sacrifice narratives, because a turning back still seems possible. In the yellow area above, vertical patches recall a window with light falling through it; it may be imitating the illumination coming from above in interior temple scenes. The two ovals lying along the lower edge stand like a plate set down on the ground. The feast itself is not visible, the vessel of the table is visible. The purple patches at the edges stand like the trace of something spilled on the ground, and no one has cleared them away.
Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious
The red notches inside the mouth that has slipped towards the chest point to a being that cannot decide between the one who satisfies and the one who devours. While the face shut inside the frame on the right is the scene's only point that looks properly, the small creature's reach carries a desire frozen between feeding and danger.
Red notches lined up inside an open mouth are the hardest place in the painting. Everything around it has softened, watered down, merged together; those notches, meanwhile, have stayed sharp. The mouth sits somewhere near the middle of the body, a little below where it ought to be, as though it had slipped from the face and descended towards the chest. This is not a mouth preparing to bite something, it looks more like a mouth that has seized something and not let go. The matter of swallowing is the painting's opening sentence.
The large figure's body is built from bubbles. Rounds piled on top of one another pass into each other with no boundary between them. Two rounds that could be a chest, another that could be a belly, all of the same dough. On the left a broad wing has opened, but it seems to have nothing to do with flying; it gives more the impression of a cover stretched to drape over something. It is hard to say whether this figure is the one who feeds or the one who takes. It goes back and forth between the two. That first great being in a small child's mind is, I think, just as blurred, the one who satisfies and the one who devours fit into the same face.
On the right there is a face taken inside a frame. Two large eyes, and beneath them scrawls that stand like writing. This face shut inside a box is the only thing in the scene that looks properly. While the rest of the painting flows, that spot holds still and watches. Above, another box can be seen, with vertical bars inside it like fingers or like the bars of a railing. A link has been made here between being looked at and being shut in. What is seen and what is put in a box turn into the same thing here. The edges of the box are drawn neatly, the only straight lines in the scene are there. While the surroundings flow, that region looks as though it had been measured. That the looking party should compose itself in this way is an interesting detail.
Below, somewhere near the mouth of the large body, stands a smaller creature. It has a long nose or beak, reaching upward. This reaching looked to me both like a movement heading towards feeding and like a step taken towards danger. The small one is going towards the mouth of the large one. The distance between them is about to close, and the painting has been stopped at exactly that moment. The small creature's body has been left indistinct, only its reaching nose is clear. That a being should be drawn by its desire alone shows that the rest of it has become unimportant.
At the very bottom, a horizontal plate or shield shape stretches out. What it is remains unclear, it stands empty. Perhaps a table, perhaps a surface that ought to have something on it and does not. The bottom of the scene is closed off by this empty surface. Beneath it a few marks remain, like a place where something has spilled and spread.
Society, Power and Technology
The open-mouthed creature's eating and vomiting tells of the closing of the difference between the text the machine swallows and the text it produces; in the feed the ability to tell things apart wears away to nothing. Because no one is sat down before the screen by force, the boundary between consent and habit is erased, and the box with vertical bars shows the cold building where the data is kept.
In the right centre a rectangular frame sits, inside it two eyes and something trying to be a face. Beneath it a small figure has sat down, its arm stretched out towards that frame. This is the posture of a person seated before a screen. The face is not real, nor does it even claim to be real; two eyes have been placed, in place of a mouth there is a row of scribble, the rest left empty. That is more than enough. It has been a long time since we last checked whether the thing before us is human or not.
On the left there is an enormous creature, its mouth open and its teeth arranged in rows. Whether it is eating or vomiting is not clear, it looks as though both are happening at once. This is the name of the matter: the closing of the difference between what goes in and what comes out. A machine swallows text, produces text, what it produces another swallows, and that one produces too. Nowhere along the chain does a person stop and ask why we are doing this, because the speed of the chain leaves no room for questions.
The edges have melted. Where one thing ends and another begins cannot be made out. This is exactly what happens while you scroll through the feed. News, advertisement, an acquaintance's holiday photo, an image of war, a manufactured face; all pass along a strip of the same width and no boundary is set between them. The ability to tell things apart does not vanish in a day, it wears away. Ask yourself what is left in your head after twenty minutes of scrolling, the answer resembles the mush on this canvas. No one sat you down there by force. Force is no longer needed; once something has been invented that solves boredom this cheaply, a person sits down of his own consent. And so, little by little, the difference between consent and habit is erased.
Up on the right there is another box, its inside divided by vertical bars. It could be a set of railings, a server rack, an apartment facade. All three count as correct, because what is stored now sits there; whatever you have written, watched, liked, sits on a shelf somewhere and you do not know where that shelf is. Forgetting that data has a place makes you forget its owner too. The word cloud was invented for this, to my mind, to make a heavy and cold building look light and innocent. Who pays that building's electricity bill, where it draws its water from, next to which small town it is built; these too are questions that stay outside the picture.
At the bottom, lying on the ground, there is something like a large plate, empty. The small figure beside it does not even look at it, its face left turned to the screen. No threshold called satiety has been set here; if the plate is empty the feed goes on, if the plate is full it goes on too. The voice asking what you are eating has been turned down, and the one asking how much you are eating has never appeared at all. The hand the small figure stretches out hangs in the air, and the surface it will touch is the most fake part of the picture.
Art History and Comparison
In Lam's bird-headed hybrids each limb is fixed as a ritual sign; the bird's head here is no symbol, it came about because the hand went that way at that moment. Whereas the marginal onlookers of the manuscript stand apart from the main scene, these boxes share the same surface as the main figure and the hierarchy has been removed.
The thing standing on the left has a bird's head, rows of red teeth in its jaw, and a half-open wing coming out of its back. Lower down this head connects to a body, but the body is not a single piece, it is gathered from bubbles piled one on top of another; a balloon in place of the hip, two more balloons in place of the chest. Making hybrid creatures is one of the most crowded files of twentieth-century painting. Wifredo Lam's bird-headed woman figures are reckoned the best-known members of this family; there hybridity comes from a ritual language, each limb fixed as a sign. Here there is no such lexicon. The bird's head is not a symbol, it became a bird's head because the hand went that way at that moment, and it looks as though, had it carried on a little further, it would turn into something else.
On the right there are two small boxes. In the lower one sits a head with two clear eyes and ears, in the upper one four or five lines standing like fingers. Both are small frames set inside the painting; they take no part in the main figure's business, they are simply there. In the marginal decorations of medieval manuscripts there are such small onlookers too, perched at the edge of the text, unconnected with the narrative, yet creatures that watch the page. The difference is that in a miniature or a manuscript those marginal figures stand outside the main scene, in a separate zone; here the boxes share the same surface as the main figure, are made with the same paint, and there is no hierarchy between them. The distance between the onlooker and the scene has been removed.
In date this is the work at the furthest edge of the series, 2026. In the series' canvases of 2019 and 2020 the bodies were denser, the paint more closed, and the ground most often stood as a dark mass. Here the ground has been worked as much as the figure; from the upper right to the lower left every inch carries the possibility of turning into something, the surface worked from end to end like a carpet. Against that, the cell logic has not been lost. The unit that turned into a single blow in the large work dated 2023 has here come back down to the size of a bubble. That is, the artist did not advance in one direction and stay there, but returned to the old unit.
The part of the tradition it rejects is likewise plain: the expectation that a scene should carry a narrative. The tradition of caricature, indeed the comic-strip panel, always brings figures side by side for the sake of an event; there is an answer to the question of who is doing what to whom. Here the bird-headed creature does not speak with the head in the box, the small figure below does not look at it, nobody does anything to anybody. The title itself, too, splits a word in two and leaves the meaning suspended. That the hand worked without knowing where it would go with its next move is clearest in that flat form spread on the ground at the lower right; its beginning like an arm, its end like a pool.
Material, Gesture and the Viewer's Experience
The runs that seep out from beneath the turquoise bar and stand tapering give away the paint's thicker-than-milk consistency and that the canvas was standing upright. The large rings building the body are measured in seconds and the trembling inside of the box on the right in minutes; the same hand has worked at two separate speeds.
From beneath the turquoise horizontal bar at the centre, five or six thin runs have seeped out and descended some twenty centimetres before stopping. Those runs describe for me the consistency at that moment: the paint there is a little thicker than milk, watery enough to move under its own weight. But the runs end in a taper, they have not pooled. So the canvas was standing upright at the time and the paint began to dry as it moved. There is no place as watery as this in the rest of the picture. Beyond it everything is thicker, not as thick as paste but laid on at the consistency of yoghurt. Even the row of red nails passing beside the runs confirms this difference; they have raised edges, the paint has not even intended to move.
If I ran my hand over the surface I think it would feel smooth. Because the build here is made of half-covering layers overlaid on one another; each layer does not entirely cover the one beneath, it passes over it and mists it. White has been used generously, and that chalky mattness acrylic takes on when opened out with white is everywhere. If I count, there are at least four rounds. At the very bottom a yellow and grey ground laid on vertically, over it blue patches, over that the body rings of the figure, and at the very top single lines flung in white. These last white lines are drier than all the others; they were dragged with the brush almost empty, so they are broken and jagged.
That row of bubbles building the body is made of rings each turned one by one. Every ring is one rotation of the wrist. I make out that the brush's diameter is perhaps a centimetre and a half from the thickness of the ring. As the rings close, they do not sit exactly onto the point where they began, they shift by a few millimetres; these shifts are not corrected, they are left as they are. The inside of the small box figure at the right centre, meanwhile, is filled at an entirely separate tempo, with tiny, trembling touches. I see the same hand working at two different speeds; the large rings are measured in seconds, the inside of that box in minutes. The yellow frame at the box's edge, too, was drawn after everything beneath it had dried, because it has not smeared into what is under it at all, it sits perfectly clean.
Fifty-five by seventy-five is a small size. A work of this size you can only make from an arm's length away, laying it flat on a table or setting it on a stand and bending over it. The source of the movement is not the shoulder but the wrist and forearm. You have to stand before it at the same distance too; looked at from a metre the surface becomes a single pastel cloud and the four layers beneath it become invisible. Looked at from forty centimetres, the weave of the canvas shows itself in the lightest-coloured places, because there the paint stayed thin and the cloth pushed its own grain upward. In the upper left corner, at the edge of a pink area, there is a thin strip the paint never covered; the cold white of the primer stands there like a cut.
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