Cenin a.k.a. Burcu Corbaci

 

Cenin (pronounce as Jeanine) is an autodidactic, self-taught, intuitive, visionary artist since 2005. She lives and creates in mind, womb, tomb and Istanbul. Cenin, her alter ego, means "fetus" in English. She studies the appearances or phenomena of the psyche - the various appearances and manifestations and forms that the psyche produces - and understood them with a depth of insight, then she reflects in her own image. Art for Cenin is a direct method of accessing the collective unconscious. She uses art to bring forward messages from her own personal unconscious using universal archetypes, symbols, subliminal messages, forms, colors, meshed with her personal - complex - iconographic - visual vocabulary. Her symbols do call up unconscious memories and infantile anxieties, but they also disclose a reality that never existed before and a need of self-reparation. So while her symbols do have a psychotic regressive side, they also have a progressive side. It is a progressive revelation of a universal structure that goes beyond the individual personal experience. Cenin's works concerns self alienation & actualization, the psychic state of infant hero, the after-effects of a child's separation from the mother through birth, the feelings of death-despair-melancholy, unfulfilled feminine idenitity, inner images of wounded mother & child, being unable to speak, traumatic feelings of being born, life vs. death instinct, alienation, self destruction & reparation, sacrificial infant/fetus gods, divine child, lost & found reality, layers of consciousness, dramatization of simulations, infantile anxiety, Jungian archetypal symbolism, gnosticism, occultism, juxtaposition of depressive and manic, mental interconnectivity...

 

As of February 2012, Cenin is represented officially by C.A.M. (Contemporary Art Marketing) Gallery which is a leading gallery in İstanbul art scene, hosted over 200 exhibitions, continuing its avant-garde and innovator manner. C.A.M. Gallery was founded in 1992 and has been run in two different places, Akaretler and Nişantaşı, since 2006.

C.A.M. Gallery (Cenin artist page): www.camgaleri.net/artistes/cenin-burcu-corbac/

C.A.M. Gallery facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/CAM-Gallery/147770008647889

C.A.M. Gallery twitter: twitter.com/#!/camgallery

 

"Cenin's paintings resonate spiritually with anyone who has the privilege to view them. Her paintings, in my opinion as a vast phantasmogoria of sublimity that will send your brain into religious ecstasy. Her paintings are also very rebellious in tone – she's perhaps the most revolutionary visionary painter since William Blake. And you can definitely hear echoed throughout her paintings the William Blake poem, the beginning of a Little Girl Lost: “Children of a future age, reading this indignant page, know that in a former time, love sweet love was deemed a crime.” And I think that future generations will look upon her paintings and basically get the same message. Love is still deemed a crime, which is perhaps where the politics come in. Freud has frequently been combined with Karl Marx, but Cenin presents perhaps a more potent combination of C.G. Jung and Karl Marx. You know, basically we're not only alienated from our libido because of capitalism, but we're also alienated from our collective unconsciousness. And really her paintings serve as an impetus to allow for those repressed psychic elements to flourish and bloom. Her paintings really serve the same function as water does with plants. I mean they heal. But, as she said, they don't only heal, they also serve to reveal, as she said: “a universal structure that goes beyond the individual personal experience.” And also a lot like William Blake, she paints from innocence instead of experience. She is one of the greatest outsider artists of all time. Her paintings are very truthful and authentic – which is unlike most art these days, which, as Ezra Pound said: “they're not made to live with and to endure, but to sell and sell quickly.” Which is – frankly a tragedy. But, anyways, yeah, she's one of the greatest painters who's ever lived and I think history will place her alongside people like Salvador Dali, or Rene Magritte, or Leonora Carrington, or Remedios Varo."

 

Nicholas Anema

Writer, the author of "Here Comes the Sun"

Denver, Colorado, USA

 

Museums and Exhibitions:

2012 - "Fresh" three person group exhibition at C.A.M. Gallery/Akaretler, Istanbul, Turkey (June 07 - July 12, 2012).

 

2011 – "Drawing Connections" group exhibition at the Siena Art Institute in Siena, Italy (September 24 - October 28, 2011). The piece included in the collection of the Siena Art Institute library.

 

2010 – "I am Abnormal II" group exibition in Abnormals Gallery Berlin, Germany (11.12.2010) and Abnormals Gallery Poznan, Poland (22.01.2011).

 

2010 – Selected artist for the "History of Art of the XX and XXI centuries" project (permanent collection of the museum) in MAC - Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Senhor do Bonfim, Bahia, Brazil (Contemporary Art Museum of the city-Senhor do Bonfim).

 

2008 - !f Istanbul International Independent Film Festival "I dream of the films that haven't been made yet" group exhibition organised in collaboration with Gallery x-ist in Istanbul, Turkey.

 

Interviews, Features, Media:

2012 – Anormalmag: Featured artist interview with Chilean alternative art magazine.

 

2012 – CNN Türk TV - AFİŞ: Featured artist on art&culture programme (14.06.2012).

 

2012 - Empati Yitimi: Poster art for the short movie.

 

2012 – Art Nouveau magazine: Featured artist in US based art & culture magazine.

 

2012 – My Hero project: Featured artist in National (US) Poetry Month art gallery.

 

2012 – Anormalmag: Featured artist in Chilean alternative art magazine.

 

2011 – "İntifada'da Bir Pinokyo": Cover art for the poetry book.

 

2011 – CVLT Nation mag: Featured artist in LA based magazine.

 

2011 - Yeni Harman mag: Visually and written interpretation about "voyuerism & culture, capitalism, state, art, etc... relation" for their essay (March- issue 151).

 

2011 – Maji mag: Turkish-English interview in Turkey's First Psy-trance Culture & Psy-art e-magazine.

 

2010 - Imagine The Imagination. New Visions of Surrealism book: Selected artist by Negoist New Art Publishing in Poland for the book. The book aims to show the variety of contemporary surreal art by 100 artists.

 

2010 - Rashit "Dinozor" EP: A collaboration with Tolga Özbey (founder of Turkish punk rock band Rashit) for their EP cover.

 

2009 - Marie Claire Turkey mag: "Night Terror Episode" featured in an interview called "Çizgi Hayaller – Dreams of an illustration" in September.

 

Cenin Facebook Fan Page: www.facebook.com/pages/CENIN/6574067933

Cenin Twitter: twitter.com/#!/ceninvoncatlien

Cenin Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/cenin/

Cenin Myspace: www.myspace.com/selfregion

Cenin Abnormals.org: abnormals.org/cenin

Cenin Behance: www.behance.net/cenin

Cenin Saatchi Online: www.saatchionline.com/cenin

Cenin Facebook Profile: www.facebook.com/ceninvoncatlien

Cenin Bluecanvas: www.bluecanvas.com/selfregion/