ISTANBUL.- Pi Artworks Istanbul is presenting Touched by Image, a solo exhibition by Aslı Torcu. In this exhibition, the artist presents works that explore the disappearance and rebirth of images in uncertainty.

Touched by Image is a space of discovery that exposes the fragile nature of time and memory. The paintings are made in layers, carrying traces from the past into the present, reflecting the paradoxes of memory and time. With their multilayered surfaces—sometimes erased, sometimes re-emerging—these works reveal an evolutionary process informed by uncertainty and the inevitability of change.

"Like the primordial chaos in which all elements are mixed together," past, present, and future intertwine on the artist’s canvases, evolving into new meanings. The paintings encourage the viewer to confront the images that undoubtedly exist within themselves and to question the riddles and triggers they provoke. However, there is no definite solution to this conundrum; the past remains an uncertain space, constantly reconstructed through the spontaneity of images from the present.

As well as documenting lost images, the paintings also engage with themes of childhood and discovery. In one painting, two children are attempting to discover treasures. This symbolizes the joy of human curiosity and the necessity of reflection in survival itself. However, this discovery does not only reference the past; it also offers the possibility of evolution and future understanding. These moments, suspended in a timeless void, are reshaped in the traces of the past and continue to exist in constant transformation.

William James' concept of “touch-images” offers an important key to the way these works are experienced. According to James, some images are not limited to visual perception; they can sometimes trigger a bodily response and evoke a physical resonance in the viewer. In the artist's works, colours, textures and forms speak to the viewer not only through the gaze, but also with an intuitive and tactile intensity. ‘Touched by Image’ functions as a laboratory that questions the concepts of memory and time, while offering a space for reflection on the existence of images. The exhibition invites the viewer to confront their own past, lost images and their echoes today. Each painting exists as a puzzle, a call and an endeavour to remember in the midst of uncertainty. However, rather than reaching a definitive conclusion, this endeavour is experienced as a process open to wandering between images, getting lost and reappearing.

Aslı Torcu (b. 1981, Turkey)

Aslı Torcu has been living and working in Paris, France. After graduating from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of Painting, she continued her education in France and completed her PhD at Paris VIII University, where she also taught. She is currently working as a lecturer at the École Supérieure d'Art de Dunkerque-Tourcoing.

Her practice is closely related to the subject of memory and is inspired by archive images. Her practice, which is figurative in essence, emerges from a search for an atmosphere of colour based on pictorial abstraction.


*Ovidius, " Metamorphoses "