Istanbul-based Ali Gulec is a graphic artist with a difference. His surreal illustrations are like identikit drawings aiming to prosecute the material arts. Working on the margins of what is possible with his medium, Gulec's forms, figures, and situations are remarkable for their clarity and strength of purpose, and maintain an iconographic intensity that would make any rock band bereft of an album cover salivate with admiration.

A reveler poses for pictures at the Victorian Picnic during the Wave and Goth festival in Leipzig June 6, 2014. The annual festival, known in Germany as Wave-Gotik Treffen (WGT), features over 150 bands and artist in venues all over the city playing Gothic rock and other styles of the dark wave music subculture. The event, one of the biggest of its kind, attracts a regular audience of up to 20,000, the organizers said. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

“Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event starts on the Monday before the American Labor Day holiday, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening. The event is described by many participants as an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A fireball billows up from a 52-foot tall wooden man as it goes up in flames September 2, 2000 during the15th annual Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert near Gerlach, Nevada. Despite high winds, dust storms, and a bit of rain, some 27,000 people camped out on a remote desert playa, or dry lake, for the week-long counter-cultural celebration of art and “radical self-expression”. (Photo by David McNew/Newsmakers)

A man poses standing on a rock looking at the aurora borealis, or northern lights, illuminating the night sky at Embleton Bay in Northumberland, England, on February 27, 2014. The northern lights is a fantastical natural light display with fast moving light effects caused by particles charged by the sun colliding with particles in Earth's upper atmosphere. (Photo by Tom White/PA Wire)

A photo taken on August 29, 2014, shows Mount Tavurvur erupting in eastern Papua New Guinea, spewing rocks and ash into the air, forcing the evacuation of local communities and international flights to be re-routed. Mount Tavurvur, which destroyed the town of Rabaul when it erupted simultaneously with nearby Mount Vulcan in 1994, rumbled to life early in the morning on the tip of the remote island of New Britain. (Photo by Oliver Bluett/AFP Photo)

An aerial view of open pits of CODELCO's Andina (L) and Anglo American's Los Bronces copper mines with Olivares glaciers in the background (top L) at Los Andes Mountain range, near Santiago city, November 17, 2014. The rock glaciers of the Chilean central zone, a huge source of water for the basins of the capital, are said to be threatened by the environmental impacts of hydroelectric and mining projects, according to environmental activists Greenpeace. (Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

This April 30, 2016 image made available by NOAA shows a deep sea anglerfish living between pillow basalt rock formations, during a deepwater exploration of the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument area in the Pacific Ocean near Guam and Saipan. The ambush predator waits for prey to be attracted by its lure, located between its eyes, and gulps it with its large mouth. (Photo by NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research via AP Photo)

Iraqi children play with a ball on a street blocked with burning tyres, amid a general strike in the southern city of Basra, on November 25, 2019. The demonstrations rocking the capital and Shiite-majority south since October 1 are the biggest grassroots movement the country has seen in decades. Sparked by outrage over rampant government corruption, poor services and lack of jobs, they have since gone straight to the source: calling out the ruling system as inherently flawed and in need of a total overhaul. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)