Painting and sketching outside, with trees rustling above and birds peering over my shoulder, provided me with moments of respite from the difficult circumstances all of us are facing. This flexibility, coupled with a sudden confrontation with mortality, allowed me to relax the harsh conceptual expectations I had placed on my work. What has emerged are paintings that are more intuitive, more alive, and more mysterious to me. Within them, there are still encrypted numbers. But the numbers stand in as magical representations for poetic titles. What comes to the forefront is an emphasis on feelings, tactility, and mystery. Something primitive that is connected deeply to the experience of being human and living on Earth. – Hayal Pozanti
Artist Hayal Pozanti invented her own language called Instant Paradise – a set of 31 characters that correspond to numbers and letter in the English alphabet. In this body of work that she created during Los Angeles’ lockdown in 2020, she inverts and layers these glyphs to encrypt dates or text within her paintings. Born in Istanbul, Pozanti currently lives in Los Angeles, and her work has been exhibited throughout the US, including the recent permanent installation in the New York Public Library’s newest branch, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library.