EDITORIAL FEATURE- published 26 November 2025
Between Memory and Surface:
Exhibition Review of Hasan Yigit’s Muse, Meditate, Reflect
Installation view, Muse, Meditate, Reflect, Art4C ArtSprout Gallery, Bangkok, 2025
Hasan Yigit is a Turkish visual artist working across painting, photography and printmaking, with a particular focus on monotype as a way of creating singular, unrepeatable images. His solo exhibition Muse, Meditate, Reflect, presented at Art4C ArtSprout Gallery in Bangkok, brought together a series of circular monotype prints created with acrylic paint on paper. Curated by Yigit himself, the exhibition introduced a body of work that sits between the discipline of printmaking and the visual presence of painting. Each work is built around the circle, a form that appears throughout the exhibition like a mirror, a window, or a contained moment of reflection. For bkk UNZINE‘s “Retro” issue, Yigit’s work stood out because it did not approach nostalgia in an obvious or decorative way. Rather than recreating images from the past, Muse, Meditate, Reflect uses color, surface and atmosphere to explore how memory continues to change in the present. The exhibition carries a clear sense of transition. Seen together, the circular works read like fragments of experience gathered across time, each one holding a different emotional temperature. Their mirror-like format allows the viewer to sense an artist responding to movement, distance and change, while the vivid colours create a connection to familiar visual memories, early digital aesthetics, liquid light and the saturated energy of the early 2000s.
As an exhibition, Muse, Meditate, Reflect is strongest when it allows printmaking to move beyond reproduction and become a language of emotional recording. Yigit does not use monotype to create editions. He uses it to produce works that can only exist once. This gives the exhibition a particular tension: the works feel controlled in their circular structure, yet open and unpredictable in their surfaces. The repeated format gives the viewer a clear rhythm, while the colours shift from one work to another with different levels of intensity, softness and interruption.
The exhibition also benefits from its directness. There is no heavy narrative forced onto the viewer. Instead, Yiğit asks us to spend time with colour, pressure, transparency and movement. Bright yellows, deep blues, blacks and whites appear throughout the series, sometimes glowing, sometimes interrupting one another, sometimes settling into quieter areas of reflection. The result is a body of work that feels personal without becoming overly explanatory. Its meaning arrives through looking.
Reflection I, monotype print with acrylic paint on paper, Art4C ArtSprout Gallery, Bangkok, 2025
Among the works featured in the exhibition, “Reflection I” immediately captures attention through its luminous color and fluid movement. Its glowing yellows and deep blues recall the hypnotic glow of the lava lamps that defined the visual culture of the early 2000s, evoking a sense of nostalgia without directly illustrating it. Rather than recreating a familiar object, Yigit transforms that visual memory into an abstract composition where color becomes the subject itself. Bright passages of yellow appear illuminated from within, interrupted by dense blues, translucent whites and darker forms that create both tension and balance. The result is neither painting nor conventional print, but a singular image that feels at once nostalgic, contemporary and remarkably alive.
Reflection VII, Monotype print with acrylic paint on paper, Art4C ArtSprout Gallery, Bangkok, 2025
“ReflectionVII” offers a different kind of presence. It is one of the more visually tense works in the series. The bright yellow first appears open and luminous, but the black slowly interrupts it, spreading across the printed surface like a heavy cloud entering a clear sky. Rather than creating a direct conflict, the two colours seem to move around each other, holding the image between brightness and shadow. Through the monotype process, this shifting balance feels suspended in a single, unrepeatable moment.
What connects these two works is the way they treat reflection not as a literal mirror image, but as a changing state of perception. ReflectionI feels fluid, glowing and almost nostalgic, while ReflectionVII introduces a quieter disturbance. Together, they show the range of the exhibition: one work pulls the viewer into color through familiarity and light, while the other creates a more uncertain atmosphere through contrast and interruption. This difference is important because it prevents the series from becoming visually repetitive. Each circle holds its own moment.
Overall, Muse, Meditate, Reflect presents Yigit as an artist developing a clear and recognisable language through contemporary printmaking. The exhibition is not only about technique, but about how technique can carry memory, transition and emotional change. Its strongest quality lies in the balance between structure and movement: the circular format gives the works unity, while the monotype process allows each image to remain open, physical and alive.
Within the context of bkkUNZINE’s “Retro” issue, the exhibition offers a thoughtful approach to memory. It does not look backwards in a simple nostalgic way. Instead, it shows how visual memory can be reshaped by new surroundings, new experiences and personal growth. Muse, Meditate, Reflect succeeds as a self-curated exhibition because it presents a focused body of work with a consistent visual language, while still allowing each print to speak with its own emotional weight.
-Nirut Chamsuwan, Bangkok.
Visit Hasan’s “Muse, Meditate, Reflect” exhibition at Art4C Gallery (near Siam Mitrtown) on the Art Sprout floor, running now through the 10th of December 2025. He would love to see the Bangkok artist community and art lovers there! And don’t forget to check out the December 2025 issue of bkk UNZINE (issue #62, “Retro”) for Hasan’s entry!
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