Adding other colors and swirling them into infinitely complex designs, Hikmet creates effects which his students, even the most gifted, can't touch. Hikmet creates a rose, a leaf, a flame. When he lifts it back up and draws the sheet over the sides of the metal tray, I'm always astonished. And it's more than magic. Viewed with anything less than an artists' eye, this city embodies chaos.
Every hue remains distinct.
This is a city that is liquid in time, never presenting the same face twice. More than Barcelona, more than Paris, Jerusalem, Los Angeles or Prague, Istanbul is the place where humanity is continually creating a canvas marbled by genius and greed, inspiration and cruelty, holiness and hunger, thievery and love.