Q & A: Ufuk Gueray in Winnipeg

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Ufuk Ali Gueray, "Market," 2014

oil on canvas, 68” x 54”

Winnipeg-based artist Ufuk Gueray’s interest in Kazimir Malevich dates back to his high school years. He recalls hating Malevich’s Head of a Peasant when he first saw a reproduction as a teenager. But 20 years later, Gueray, who is of Turkish descent and grew up in Germany, is thinking again about the Russian Suprematist painter. 

“There are painterly moments in many of Malevich’s works that just look ugly, like clumsy smudges and accidental smears that could have been fixed," says Gueray, an instructor at the University of Manitoba. “But instead, he chose to leave them, or didn’t notice, or didn’t think twice about it. I like them as evidence, as traces of a hurried desire to see an image materialize on a surface, and to be the first one to make this picture before someone else has the idea. Painting is a messy job, and maybe we’re just getting too used to seeing things in a pristine digital sphere.” 

Gueray’s show, Carrés et Paysans / Peasants and Squares, at Winnipeg’s La Maison des artistes visuels francophones from March 1 to April 14, is inspired by Malevich’s return to figuration after years of making pioneering abstract art. Malevich has become Gueray’s “personal guide for how to overcome boredom, nihilism and artist’s block in the studio.” 

Gueray has a Master’s degree in fine arts from the Glasgow School of Art and a BFA from Montreal's Concordia University. He has shown his work in Canada, Germany and Britain. In 2014, he received an honourable mention in the RBC Canadian Painting Competition. 

He was interviewed in Winnipeg by artist and writer Cliff Eyland.

So you have lived in Canada for a while but you're from Germany, and of Turkish descent. That seems like a load of cultural reconciliation for you to do as an artist.

I don’t know if I ever engaged in a reconciliation of these different cultures. I think of myself as a member of a diaspora, belonging neither completely to my parents’ original cultural community, nor to the mainstream fabric of German (or Canadian) society. As an artist, I work within a Western paradigm. This is not the tradition of my ancestors, but it is the one with which I am most familiar. It’s a strange position to be in, particularly as a painter. You constantly look to historic examples for inspiration and guidance, but looking back means realizing that the important names are a very homogenous crowd, for the most part. I only recently came to terms with the fact that I am engaging with traditions that will never completely feel like they are my own.

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Ufuk Ali Gueray, "Market, " (detail) 2014

oil on canvas, mounted on board, series of four ovals, 14” x 11” each

Canada is supposed to be immigrant friendly, but is it? One thing I've noticed is that Canadian regions especially validate the born-and-bred local artist, as if certain local qualifications must be met. In other words, people are unlikely to refer to you as a Prairie painter, for example. Some people might even resist calling you a Winnipeg artist, even though you are.

My guess is that we are all hardwired to want to simplify and think in clearly designated categories and labels. The world is complex, and reverting to labels helps us understand things more easily. Unfortunately, that also means that subtleties get overlooked all the time. Historically, people have had to relocate for various reasons – political, economic – and my family was no exception. There is a long history of migration in my family. My grandfather was born in Thessaloniki, which used to be part of the Ottoman Empire, and now belongs to Greece. My mom is from Izmir, and my dad from a small town close to Istanbul. They both immigrated to Germany in the 1970s, which is where my sister and I were born. In some form or another, I have always felt like someone from the outside, an Ausländer, as they call it in German. In Scotland, I was Canadian. In Quebec, I was an Anglo. In Germany, I am a Turk, and the last time I visited Turkey, in 1996, I was called a German. Winnipeg is one of the more welcoming places I have lived in. But you’re right; probably no one would ever describe me as a Prairie painter.

There don’t seem to be any obvious influences in your work to German painters, such as Neo Rauch or Gerhard Richter.

There are artists whose work I like without them necessarily having a detectable visual influence on my work. Rauch and Richter were important to me when I was younger. The last few years, I have looked at artists like Forrest Bess, Alfred Jensen, Vija Celmins, to name a few. I read a lot of novels, and maybe that flows into my studio practice in one form or another. I like Sasha Marianna Salzmann and Juli Zeh, to mention some contemporary German authors.

Do you see the sausage paintings, aside from double entendres, as having a German culinary reference?

No.

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Ufuk Ali Gueray, "Peasant Variations," 2017

pastel on paper, 14” x 11” each

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Source image for Ufuk Ali Gueray: Kazimir Malevich, "Head of a Peasant," circa 1928-1930

oil on panel, 28” x 21” (Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg)

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You spoke at a recent Banff lecture about an obsession with Malevich, which dates from your high school years, and a certain frustration with his painting techniques. Could you talk about that?

I was taking about a particular painting called Head of Peasant, a figurative piece made in 1928-1930, way after his Suprematist period. I am thinking about this painting a lot, lately. I can distinctly recall hating it when I first saw a reproduction of it in high school. I thought it looked dumb: this pale dude with helmet-like hair, a yellow triangle nose, and a beard that looks like a poorly constructed kite. My feeling was that this painting would probably get me a failing grade in my high school art class for its simplification of forms and its sloppiness. In my defense, I was young and opinionated, but the piece left enough of an impression on me that I thought about it 20 years later, and decided to work on a lecture and series of paintings and drawings based on this one piece.

There are painterly moments in many of Malevich’s works that just look ugly, like clumsy smudges and accidental smears that could have been fixed. But instead, he chose to leave them, or didn’t notice, or didn’t think twice about it. I like them as evidence, as traces of a hurried desire to see an image materialize on a surface, and to be the first one to make this picture before someone else has the idea. Painting is a messy job, and maybe we’re just getting too used to seeing things in a pristine digital sphere.

You and your partner Erica Mendritzki are both painters. How does that affect your work?

We talk about painting a lot, and we are very honest with each other. That’s another way of saying that we are bad at hiding it if we think a piece by the other person isn’t working. It’s really special to have someone who knows your work so well, and has seen it develop and change over such a long period.

You are a new father, how does that affect your work?

I have become more efficient with my time. Every drastic change in my life has led to interesting changes in the studio. I like change.

Tell me about your art education. Did it start in high school? How would you characterize your art school years?

I had a good art teacher in my last two years in high school. He was an actual artist, and that was unusual for rural small town in Southern Germany. He was originally from Silesia, and studied under someone who was taught by a student of Kandinsky. He told me how this person had a very high opinion of himself for having had a famous teacher, but that he wasn’t a very good teacher himself. I like this story because it is so symptomatic of the art world – there are so many people who feel important for unimportant reasons. I think it’s hilarious that I can say I was taught by someone who was taught by someone who was taught by Kandinsky. It means next to nothing, but then, everything is somehow connected.

At Concordia, I was taught by Leopold Plotek, who had a very formative influence on me. In class, he showed us lots of images of pre-1900 historic work. It was good to learn, from early on, to contextualize your work within a long aesthetic and historic trajectory, despite the issues of representation touched upon earlier. My experience at the Glasgow School of Art was a little strange. The people I had to do with the most in my MFA program thought of themselves as theorists or conceptual artists, which really meant that they had very little material sensibility and understanding. I met two painters, however, who I still think about a lot: Carol Rhodes and Merlin James. Unfortunately, they taught in a different department, so I only met with them a handful of times. They are the kind of people who will keep working on a painting over a period of 20 years, if necessary.

Because you are multilingual and a good writer, I have teased you about becoming a curator, and you have done some curating. Does that interest you?

I have curated in the past, and will do it again. It’s another way to work through ideas that occupy me in my own work, and to create opportunities for artists who I think are talented. I have dealt with various themes through curating, like the look of value, melancholy, food, single-channel video, etc. It’s interesting to think about how a work relates to certain ideas I am preoccupied with, and to discuss these ideas with other artists involved in the project. To be honest, though, I don’t want to be a curator. I know that once it starts being a job, it would become less fun.

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Ufuk Ali Gueray, "Lithograph Stone," 2016

oil on canvas, 24” x 30”

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Ufuk Ali Gueray, "Lithograph Stone – 5889," 2016

oil on canvas, 36” x 48”

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I find your litho-stone paintings to be compelling, maybe because they refer to an outdated technology. Why did you make them?

Through these images of lithograph stones, I am addressing both painterly concerns, and issues of visibility: These works taunt the viewer by displaying only their grimy, thickly painted, ink-stained sides, keeping the image on the polished drawing surface of the stone out of sight.

There is poignancy to the imminent obsolescence of this medium. Painting has often been declared dead or dying, but there is not substantial material threat to its continuation. These limestone slabs, however, are found in only one small and near-exhausted quarry in Bavaria, not too far from where I was born. They were once commonly used in industrial print shops all over the world, but have now become rare and difficult to procure. Each new motif demands that the old image is ground away by polishing and partially pulverizing the surface. Each new image thus brings the stone closer to its breaking point. There is a melancholy quality to these works.

Wow! I would not have guessed the Bavarian connection. That’s a subtle reference. So your work embodies an internationalism of sly references.

Yes, in this instance, there is a geographic reference.

What’s next for you?

Since the birth of my son, I have started becoming interested in using my family history and cultural background more actively as a generative source in my art. I am currently working on a project about my late uncle Atilla’s mirror store in Izmir. I don’t know where this project will lead me, but I am excited about it. ■

Carrés et Paysans / Peasants and Squares runs from March 1 to April 14, 2018.