Lot Essay
The Straightjacket series of Balkan Naci Islimyeli dates from 1990 and marks a clear departure from his previous work. Part installation, part painting and part collage, these works make a strong statement about the precarious balance between intelligence and imagination within the artist's creative process. The works feature straightjackets cut from canvas and scrawled with script, and photographs of the artist's face contained within halos, which are in fact plastic toilet seats. Divine imagery is thus juxtaposed with the everyday within the context of insanity. Loss of responsibility is usually something which prefigures madness, but as Islimyeli suggests through his prominent inclusion of image of the artist himself, in a work of art the artist can never deny responsibility for his creation. For Islimyeli he difference between intelligence and insanity is the means to communicate ideas to the external world rather than the unchecked expression of the inner world, which consitutes insanity.