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Phantom Limbs (Solo Exhibition – 2025)

Selcuk Artut / Phantom Limbs (Solo Exhibition – 2025)

“Phantom Limbs” explores the fragile tension between order and collapse, drawing upon the haunting image from Planet of the Apes (1968) where the Statue of Liberty lies buried in sand—a poignant symbol of a fractured connection to the past. In this moment of dystopian revelation, the grandeur of human achievement is reduced to a relic, echoing the precariousness of meaning when the structures that sustain it falter.

The concept of “Phantom Limbs” is included in this exhibition to represent a metaphor for a sense of absence and presence that is not present but is still deeply felt. This tension echoes Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, particularly his exploration of perception as an embodied experience. Just as the body perceives and reacts to a phantom limb—sensing its presence even in its absence—the viewer’s encounter with these works becomes an active, embodied process of meaning-making. These patterns are not static objects but events of perception, calling the audience to engage their own lived experience in interpreting the forms.

This body of work reimagines traditional geometric patterns—symbols of harmony and continuity—as artifacts of both resilience and disintegration. These forms, once rooted in cultural stability, are fragmented and transformed, becoming metaphors for the act of noesis*: the human capacity to find or create meaning amid the ruins. The patterns are not mere forms; they are thought made visible, lines drawn by intellect and shaped by imagination. As Merleau-Ponty suggests, perception is always incomplete, a dialogue between the perceiver and the world. Similarly, these geometric fragments invite a dialogue with the viewer, where perception bridges the gap between what is seen and what is intuited.

Geometric patterns, often seen as archetypes of stability, unity, and transcendence, are here recast as phantom remnants of a cultural and intellectual past. In their deconstructed state, they become artifacts of memory—echoes of their original wholeness. Even in their altered forms, they retain a lingering trace of their historical and symbolic significance, mirroring the paradox of presence within absence. They ask us to engage in a process of reconstruction, not as an act of nostalgia, but as an imaginative response to impermanence.

In this space of contradiction, beauty and decay coexist. The fragmented patterns, much like phantom limbs, retain the sensation of completeness even when their physical integrity is lost. Abstract art’s capacity to balance the tangible and the conceptual is evident in these works, as they invite viewers to reckon with what is lost when systems collapse but also what remains—the enduring potential for reconstitution, for perceiving and imagining anew.

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s idea that perception is a form of intertwining between the subject and the object, these works situate the viewer in a phenomenological space where meaning is not imposed but emerges. The act of perceiving these fractured patterns becomes an experience of both reflection and creation, embodying the viewer’s capacity to transform absence into presence, and to find coherence within chaos.

The works draw a delicate line between the dystopian and the timeless. By disrupting the harmony of geometric forms, they create a tension that mirrors the precariousness of meaning itself. Yet, within this disruption lies the human drive to find coherence amid disorder, to transform impermanence into continuity, and to create beauty even in the shadow of collapse. Like a sunken monument, these works invite us to contemplate transience, but also to dare to create in its disclosure.

* Edmund Husserl considers noesis as one of the fundamental concepts of phenomenology. According to him, noesis represents the active side of consciousness. It refers to a person’s conscious awareness of an object or experience and the process of creating meaning.

– Photos: Kayhan Kaygusuz