Hüseyin Işık or controlled chance

Four elements rule life. Fire, rain, wind and earth. Years later I added them.

I was born in the early 1960s in a small Kurdish village, I don't know exactly when.

The whole family emigrated to Istanbul shortly afterwards. Before I went to elementary school, I made my first drawing on the wall and got my first slap in the face for it. From that moment on, I started drawing everywhere, with everything I could get my hands on, and got myself into even more trouble.

In 1975 my first short story was published, and a year later my first cartoon. I started working as a cartoonist for various newspapers at that time. There was a civil war in Turkey, which culminated in the fascist military coup of 1980. Everything was forbidden - speaking, thinking, reading, going for a walk in pairs, ... at that time I began studying graphic design at the University of Applied Arts. As a cartoonist and illustrator, I worked for both major daily newspapers and banned magazines.

In 1984, I initiated a traveling exhibition against the death penalty, in which a group of cartoonists took part. The success of this exhibition, however, took another 16 years to come - when Turkey abolished the death penalty.

In 1988, I came to Vienna - to a different world with different people and a different reality, to a Balkanized Central Europe with Turkish coffee. I made myself available to the time, for any use.

From the mid-1990s, I regularly exhibited on the topics of identity, racism, foreignness. I developed a love for public spaces - streets, alleys, squares, hospitals, universities, elementary schools, theaters, subways, libraries, train stations, buses, construction sites, ... and for a different kind of storytelling. Discovering the city, bringing dark sides to light, enjoying breakfast as art - at that time everything was under my control, only I was out of control.

I was a police officer checking IDs, detonated sculptures with explosives, murdered candles by depriving them of oxygen, erected border gates in the open, destroyed pictures for poetic justice, auctioned off human rights activists sentenced to death for freedom, wrote chat programs without electricity or cables, just with paper and pen, ...

I have not been allowed to go to Turkey for ten years because I forgot to do my military service.

Now I am sitting under my tree, making coffee for my neighbors...

My twin whispered the above text in my ear. I just wrote it down.

H.Isik Friedrichshof, 2009

Studied at the University of Applied Arts, diploma from the Marmara University of Fine Arts

Worked as a draftsman, illustrator, and caricaturist for various newspapers and magazines. Also co-founder of several print media

Numerous exhibitions, installations, actions, performances and films at home and abroad in various galleries, museums, art galleries and in public spaces

Participant in the 53rd International Biennale in Venice

Workshops and seminars on the subject of art and creativity

Lives and works at Friedrichshof / Burgenland since 2003