Necla Rüzgar

The extensive fi gurative work of Turkish artist Necla Rüzgar (*1972), in her home country one of the best-known contemporary painters of her generation, is on show at GRIMMWELT Kassel for her fi rst solo exhibition in Germany. The accompanying publication comprises a cross-section of highly expressive works consisting of paintings and drawings in which Rüzgar turns time and again to myths and legends to address the cultural and social conditions of being a woman in a misogynistic environment. Symbolically charged and meticulously executed scenes feature subtly unsettling constellations of women, men, and animals, seemingly enraptured in sleep or ready to resort to violence as the perpetrators and victims of a hunt involving animals and humans. Rüzgar also revisits the ambiguous proximity of women and animals in her concentrated ink drawings created most recently during the Corona pandemic. Here they undergo a liberating transformation as elegant hybrid creatures from which ambivalent beings in metamorphosis emerge: a woman's head giving birth to a fox; the fox, to a peacock. The publication available in German, Turkish, and English is complemented by three introductory essays on the artist's work, written by the curator Kevser Güler, the historian Christina Soose, and the art historian Peter Stohler. von Kevser, Güler und Stohler, Peter und Soose, Christina und Stohler, Peter und Soose, Christina