Buried in a liquid grave (120*50 cm oil/canvas)

Looking at yourself while looking at yourself (100*80 cm oil/canvas)

Creeping Erosion; From Fear, From Want (180*145 cm oil/canvas)

Dying where I stand (100*80 cm oil/canvas)

Staring into the abyss (100*80 cm oil/canvas)

His face greeted me with ice (180*145 cm oil/canvas)

Between "All" and "Have" lies my hope (180*145 cm oil/canvas)

The Study of Essence
An Inquiry into Truth Beyond Perception

Introduction

In the depths of epistemological and ontological exploration, the human being finds themselves entangled in a fundamental desire: to understand the essence — not only of the world, but of the self. This inquiry, as ancient as thought itself, is neither a passive observation nor a purely intellectual exercise. It is an existential trajectory, where every question opens into the unknown and every certainty trembles under the weight of its own limitation.

Our cognitive faculties, the instruments we rely on to traverse the world, are not neutral pathways to truth. They are colored, filtered, and inescapably confined by the very structure of perception. What we call “knowledge” is often nothing more than an assemblage of impressions — images, names, associations — tethered to the sensory veil. The danger lies not in ignorance, but in mistaking this veil for the Real.

This investigation unfolds from a central concern: whether what we perceive and understand through our sensory-intellectual faculties can ever grant access to the essence of things. Perception may reflect appearances, but does it allow us to touch the metaphysical core of what is?

The epistemological traditions of both Western phenomenology and Islamic metaphysics recognize the pitfalls of sensory knowledge. From Husserl to Suhrewardi, from Avicenna to Heidegger, we encounter the tension between the phenomenal and the noumenal, the visible and the veiled. But while the Western tradition often turns toward structures of consciousness or language, the Islamic metaphysical approach insists on the possibility of unveiling the Real — not through reason alone, but through purification, proximity, and the alignment of being.

Throughout this research, painting became not an illustrative supplement but an inseparable companion to thought. Each canvas emerged as a visual embodiment of philosophical struggle — a surface on which questions were inscribed, dissolved, and reformed. The paintings did not illustrate conclusions; rather, they participated in the process. Each brushstroke was an inquiry. Each layered texture a meditation. The act of painting thus became a performative ontology — a way of knowing that bypasses propositional logic and reaches into the terrain of silence, gesture, and vision

As I progressed in thought, the paintings evolved. Early works leaned into forms distorted by perception, echoing the confusion of essence with appearance. Later works, influenced by a deeper metaphysical realization, began to strip away representational anchors, embracing the abstraction not as a stylistic device but as a metaphysical imperative — a refusal to reduce being to image. The voids in the compositions became as meaningful as the forms, pointing toward absence as a mode of presence.

Cognition, when reduced to information and method, becomes an echo chamber of the human mind, circling endlessly around signs and symbols without ever arriving at their source. Methodology, though necessary, becomes tyrannical when worshipped. The philosophical framework of this project warns against the absolutization of method, inviting instead a radical humility — a willingness to admit the poverty of knowledge when disconnected from lived, embodied, purified being.

It is in this space — between conceptual clarity and ontological vulnerability — that “The Study of Essence” takes place. The works born from this space are neither declarations nor doctrines. They are fragments of a metaphysical cartography — unfinished, contingent, haunted by their own insufficiency. Yet they bear witness to a process: of seeking, stripping, confronting, and waiting.

In the final movement of this research, we arrive not at resolution but at an opening. We are left with the unsettling recognition that even our most refined understandings are susceptible to illusion. The Real cannot be apprehended by grasping; it must be met by becoming. One must undergo a transformation not merely of thought, but of being.

Conclusion

This first part of The Study of Essence, with 24 artworks, ends where it must: not in a fixed proposition, but in a trembling question. What lies beyond knowledge as representation? What kind of vision emerges when the veil of perception is burnt away — not with force, but through a long and disciplined purification?

The second phase of this inquiry, already underway, will turn more directly to the conditions of unveiling, and the necessary inner transmutation that enables one to see without the mediation of the senses. It will explore not only what essence is, but how it might be encountered — through art, through silence, and through the paradox of unknowing.