Parallel

In Parallel, Murat Pulat breaks away from the realism of a black-and-white movie still by highlighting the Swedish actress Liv Ullmann's delicate face with saturated shades of blue, yellow, red and purple as he recreates in a fragmented way a scene from the acclaimed film Persona, directed by Ingmar Bergman in 1966. Considered as one of the cinematographic masterpieces of the twentieth century, Persona explores the symbiotic relationship between an actress suffering a breakdown, in which she refuses to speak and the nurse in charge as she recuperates in a country cottage. The film evokes the communication issues that arise between the two characters and reflects on art and its nature and as such, inspired Murat Pulat's aesthetics in his recent series of paintings, of which the present work is an outstanding example.
Inspired by the history of cinema and particularly by Jean-Luc Godard and Ingmar Bergman's films, Pulat alludes to the absurdity of human existence with irony and sarcasm by expressing his own beliefs through painting. He not only references the antiquated features of the original film, but simultaneously introduces his own interpretation through his unprecedented technique and his use of colour. By applying thick coats of paint on the surface of the canvas, he confers materiality to his works, adds spark to the image and creates a texture that is reminiscent of the pixels in the original still.
The viewer is strangely hypnotised by the splashes of colour that enhance the nostalgic beauty of the female actress. Like his earlier works in which the vertical shades of colour alluded to the television test cards of the 1960s and 1970s, the artist's innovative appropriation of pointillism and his streaks of flamboyant colours pushes the viewer to embark on a stream of infused energy that mirrors the soul of the artist.