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Nazım Ünal Yılmaz

Nazım Ünal Yılmaz’s (b. 1981) painting is a sensible balance between dealing with matters of the private and the public by merging personal story with social history. Their combination of poetics with politics as well as their ability to renew the language of expressive figurative painting gives his pieces strength and individuality. Although dealing with issues like identity and nationality as well as personal freedom, due to his formal choices, the paintings are not didactic, polemic or pedagogic, but on the contrary they invite the spectator to actively participate in the decoding of the painting. His brushstrokes appear as if they are blown across quickly, though they are meticulously placed. Even tastelessness, the deliberately dilettantism, unpleasant colours, blurriness are always clearly intentional. This contradictoriness between skill and working against it creates in his way of painting the tension. In a broader sense, Yılmaz's works stand as a testament to the mastery of a deeply personal style of expression, skilfully employed to harmonise the political with the personal. In 2024, Nazım Ünal Yılmaz received Statsstipendium by the Ministry of Arts and Culture in Austria.