Özlem Altın's Evanescent Paintings at SpazioA, Pistoia

SpazioA in Pistoia presents a new exhibition by German-Turkish artist Özlem Altın (born 1977 in Goch), featuring recent paintings and drawings that explore bodily existence as a mythological epic around the force-vulnerability dichotomy. The exhibition, titled "holding, containing," unfolds through floating presences in scarlet tones and dense pigment clusters that seem to dissolve into the canvas's vaporosity, evoking the poetry of Anne Sexton or Shelley Jackson. Altın's work oscillates between dreamlike and subtly disturbing, suspended between inside and outside, detaching from the ground to float in uncertainty. The human, cosmic, and animal coexist on the canvas as an arena of immutable cycles and creative speculation where being mirrors becoming. For Altın, the body serves simultaneously as a means of expression and a repository of knowledge—an interface to communicate and transmit knowledge through touch and contact. Soft colors echoing flesh, skin, and biological tissues ground an epistemological reflection. The physicality of canvas and color stratifications contrasts with the movement of color as a flow of life, memory, possibility, and realization—being that becomes flesh and flesh that sublimates into being. Altın's work focuses on transformation and abstraction of the human body, seeking points of contact with flowing time and a transforming universe, creating a narrative that recalls mythology but leaves questions open rather than providing explanations.