Gallery | archmuseum.org

Sadi Calik "Living In Order to Create Sculpture Where There is None" | Abstract Sculptures

This first abstract work done in plaster in 1950, is an interpretation of nature. Just like Henry Moore, who says he learned from stones and bones throughout his life, as a teacher, Sadi Calik told his students in the 1968 academy journal exactly what it was he expected of them: the Plastic Arts encompasses the research and study of nature assimilated in the Art of Ancient Egypt and Greece.

Figurative expressionism was not one of his favourite styles and he supported the view that it is not the function of painting and sculpture to tell a story. Sculpture and painting are always pushing the boundaries of their elements in order to find new ways of communication. The abstract expressionist painter Hans Hartung and the German sculptor Uhlmann interested him. He admired Antoine Pevsner, Naum Gabo and Max Bill for their movement towards natural science. Later he became interested in Rothko and Fontana, and Mary Vieire, whom he saw at the 1967 Venice Biennale, had a profound influence on him.

However, Sadi Calik´s understanding of clarity, lightness and volatility is expressed in a linear mass. His obsession for using line and idea that it could express many things is a feature of this. Sadi Calik explores linear worth in spatial form. In his own words, his 1957 work "Minimum" points towards an understanding of "the worth of a single line in space" . However, later, he continues his research intothe relationship between form and space on various different dimensions. In his sketches for sculptures, compositions which fill the space are seen. The four sides of a space, the ceiling and the floor, all six areas which confront the viewer, are equal in form and are conceived from the point of view of sculpture These are the thoughts of a pioneer in the positioning of details later.

Sadi Calik is a researcher into what is new in art; he is not a "formalist" but a "physicist": "To our way of thinking, art is not metaphysical but physical, that is rational art. Art made by pushing the limits of possibilities of the tools and art made by experiment."

Siren Calik