Ayse Ipekdokuyan

Dursun Mahsun

In this work, I extend the cinematic frame through oil paint while confining the character within drawn lines, emphasizing drawing as a direct trace of the artist’s hand and emotional register. This contrast allows me to explore Mahsun’s condition—his profound sense of hopelessness and entrapment within a life and society he cannot escape. Though he is shaped and constrained by external forces, he is also implicated in his own circumstances, as if continually sketching himself into cycles of difficulty.By separating illusionistic painting from linear drawing, I aim to fracture reality into layers: the world as a seemingly complete, self-sustaining image, and the figure as unstable, exposed, and unresolved. The background—depicting the Bosphorus and Rumeli Hisarı—suggests a façade of permanence and beauty, yet beneath it lies a structure of ruins. This reflects a broader condition in which individuals remain bound to invisible wounds, rarely afforded the space or agency to move beyond them.