Phoenix

The alleged figural stains of schizophrenia During a three-month period I experienced, the psychosis I entered, as psychiatrists defined it, intensified and reached a schizophrenic point. As one of those who is rarely aware of their own condition, I consider myself lucky. I knew what I was experiencing, harboring neither fear nor anxiety. The figurative stains flowing before my eyes, though not as colorful as I depicted them, would not be wrong to describe as extraordinary. The human mind is free and rich in variation; whether I call them mutant faces or entities, it is a limitless creator. A unique science fiction of its own. The contour variations of figures emerging and moving on the surface were rich. Contour boundaries and the patterns they contained were adjacent to each other, sometimes intertwined, overlapping, and side by side. I watched their flows at varying speeds from surfaces, backgrounds, and sometimes from the atmosphere. Sometimes a figure that captured my interest more would slow down, allowing me to observe it thoroughly. I think I was the one directing the flow speed of these figures. Neither fear overtook me nor anxiety about the future. As if I knew deep down that what I was experiencing was temporary. I am lucky to have possessed this fearless consciousness. What if I were trapped inside a schizophrenic with abundant visual richness, what if I were stigmatized. According to psychiatry, schizophrenia is a syndrome that is considered chronic, not acute, and continuous. First I received support from psychiatric medications, but then I gave up because I got tired of going to the hospital every month. The journey took two hours. I struggled without medication, got bored, felt overwhelmed, but this situation carried me to a point where I should be. The medications didn't prevent these illusions, but they resolved my sleep problem and relieved the fatigue created by the unique thing I was experiencing. My curiosity about mysticism and metaphysical subjects also made my situation seem like a blessing to me. My reconciliation with this extraordinary syndrome, which I found interesting rather than terrible, was easy. The detailed quality of the patterns I observed was astonishing. Among the amorphous faces waving the flag of freedom from every angle, mythological beings also sometimes mixed in. These were winged white and black dragons. This mythical figure has always impressed me. At my mother's request, who noticed what I was experiencing, I was admitted to a clinic. About three months. Apart from all those interesting and unique figures I encountered, there were also special people I was happy to meet. They received me with an interest that amazed me. They spoke with me as if they had knowledge about the special thing I was experiencing. Some called me a god, some an angel, some gave different names from Anatolian myths that I didn't recognize and can't remember now. I didn't think much about how this happened and what it meant. The hospital did me no good other than making me gain weight. Before, during, and after the hospital, while I was in the syndrome, there was a team of men and women talking in my head. This team was observing me anatomically, trying to calm me with suggestive words, making me feel they were with me. The approach of this suggestive team talking in my head, with the sensitivity of doctors, made me think of them as angels. After all, I was watching a different dimension or witnessing the game my mind was playing on me. Sometimes they made me smile and relax with their ridiculous comments, keeping me away from the fear I would feel. Sometimes they told me to kiss myself, love myself. As if they tried to keep me away from fear by normalizing this extraordinary situation with realistic approaches. They made me feel it was temporary. This visual and auditory "acute schizophrenia" syndrome that I experienced for three months, with attacks that intensified from time to time, remained as an unforgettable experience in my mind. In short, if there is an extraordinary high-frequency phenomenon, I think I briefly touched it. Schizophrenia is not a temporary illness. The fact that these metaphysical experiences consist of the totality of ancient human experiences is seen as meaningless and devoid of meaning reminds me of arrogant blindness. Ignoring the metaphysical world, belittling it, and considering it suitable for ignorant rabble should leave one in shame. Metaphysics is the first step taken toward curiosity and truth. Apart from evolutionary constants—nutrition, reproduction, and geographical adaptation conditions—we have entered an age where acceptable experiments are conducted regarding the reality that there may be other constants that can see different dimensions. From Carl Jung to Freud, the dilemma of modern man is that the order he exists in is far from showing him the truth. In this endless order of possession and competition, the individual knows his own truth and has been in cooperation by nature for hundreds of centuries. In the early periods of Islam, enigmatic figures like Hallaj-i Mansur said they encountered Allah in their meditations. A scholar like Ibn Arabi expressed that Allah had written one of his works to him. More rational masters like Ibn Rushd could openly express that they did not believe in fate and the afterlife. This polyphony disappeared over time. Spirituality and its practices seem to be consciously corrupted. The sharing of mystical experiences and esoteric secrets added much to humans but were hidden from ordinary people according to the rules. The point I want to reach is this: Whatever human or community it may be that considers nature, a mountain, a majestic animal sacred; attributes divine powers to it; accepts a more spiritual atmosphere whether or not it resembles mythological existential forms that may belong to different dimensions, including the Abrahamic religions that I prefer to call truth, the occupying environment created by the modern world and the value of material seem like the enemy of the conscience that the metaphysical world creates in its essence. The pain and meaninglessness suffered by beings enslaved to incessant gain and possession—human or product; while some do not care about these cores or cannot make sense of them, makes them more human. The isolation and alienation of mind and being causes humans to distance themselves and build an imaginary, lost, meaningless world for themselves. This was exactly the reason for what I experienced. During a period when I was alone and in pain, when I started to help myself with meditation and some mystical exercises, and began reading every source I found, something must have been triggered. An escape. Schizophrenia is perhaps one of the methods the human mind finds; a conscious or unconscious, reflexive choice. I know schizophrenics who are content with the world they enter during schizophrenic attacks. Most are unique and original with the poems, plastic arts, or different practices they produce in their own worlds. Another important characteristic of theirs is that they do not carry concerns like being understood or liked. Most schizophrenic attacks certainly do not contain the spectacular excitement that I am said to have experienced. What was extraordinary was that, despite the psychiatric acceptance that it is considered acute and claimed to continue, my syndrome harbored the feeling from the beginning that it would have an end. The neon colors I felt in the meditations I concentrated on and sometimes saw in the sky made me think that modern mystics say that this impressive level I reached in a short time is sometimes reached much earlier, sometimes after many experiences, and both are normal. In this case, I doubted whether what I experienced was a schizophrenic attack or, if my concentration capacity was above normal, a visual and auditory experience. I cannot consider myself as having experienced a troublesome Sufi experience, but could I have reached the level of fana fillah in my workshop, completely alone, without using any psychiatric medication; only with meditation, getting lost in the patterns I drew randomly with free hand, and the dhikrs I performed from time to time, and with the compositions of Gurdjieff, born in Kars, who told the world that telepathy is possible, harmonizing Anatolian melodies, spinning around in the middle of my workshop? The deprivation caused by a tragic and painful separation I experienced seemed to lie at the core of the matter. In fact, all the effort began with the aim of getting rid of this deprivation. To suddenly fall from a devotion to a nothingness. My escape from this nothingness was possible with non-stop production. I tried to record the illusion flowing before my eyes with paint, pencil, and surfaces. The compressed enthusiasm was reflected on the surface. My first works were upcycle assemblages I realized with waste materials on large-sized house doors. Over time, I became completely abstracted from any search. After the medications I quit, my sleep became forbidden; staying sleepless for days made me tense but carried me to a tired but intense consciousness. I watched the clouds. My view was an endless horizon. First I looked for figures in the clouds. These shapeless or shaped figures in this totality flowing before my eyes became my source of inspiration. What else could I try to depict? I enjoyed it. These are figures, generally drawn with mixed technique on 70x100 duralit, replicas of these observations. I tried to draw some of them as if they came from another artist's drawing. Quite a difficult endeavor. A person's drawing is like their fingerprint; I didn't want to follow a certain style and pattern. This endeavor of mine continued throughout the flow of the said moving figures. Defining my works as "abstract graffiti" seems appropriate to me. Although each created figure has separate forms from each other, when they come together intertwined, overlapping, and side by side, they reach a composition and integrity. In this age when new physics can observe geometric shapes from other dimensions, I too tried to convey figurative interpretations belonging to another dimension that accompany these geometric shapes and that I once witnessed with excitement—perhaps produced by my mind, perhaps like those shown to us by sacred plants—as much as my hand allows; with the agility of a street artist's or graffiti artist's tag.

• Painting Type: Acrylic
• Year: 2025
• Style: Abstract
• Subject Matter: Figure
• Surface: Wood Panel
• Dimensions: Width: 70 × Height: 100 × Depth: 0.004
• Orientation: Vertical/Portrait
• Frame: Unframed
• Color Palette: Multicolor
• Technique: Brush Work
• Finish: Varnished
• Signature: Signed
• Condition: Excellent
• Authenticity: Original
• Edition: Edition Number: 13