Hotel Lobby (Lourdes)

170cm x 164cm, oil on canvas, 2009, private collection, Istanbul

Hotel Lobby (Lourdes) is one of a series of works dealing with transition spaces.

Representing neither arrival nor departure, these spaces symbolise the ‘pause’ before travellers continue on their journey to the next stopping point.

In the painting, the chairs themselves can be seen as ambiguous symbols; as images of despair in that their function implies disability or as symbols of elation in that they are empty.