Osman Can Yerebakan What does it mean to make paintings today when we are stuck between URL and IRL?
Ali Banisadr I ask this to myself all the time, and painting saves me! I’m able to tap into a place above thinking, a place of intelligence that can only be accessed through painting. I haven’t witnessed this other type of consciousness conveyed by any other medium in such a spiritual way. There’s a mystical aspect to painting in which it creates a portal to a place smarter than what I could possibly reach. Every time I tried other mediums, I felt limited—they didn’t mesh with my nature. Painting takes me back to an ancient way of thinking when people understood what they imagined through painting. It was basically magic that drove them to paint. They didn’t do it to show in an exhibition or to sell. When I look at paintings from five hundred years ago from Northern Europe, I am able to communicate, and that is pretty powerful. The only other experience where I can see this possibility is in poetry. i
