- Catalog essay for the exhibition "KATABASIS" (2014).
"Nurettin Erkan’s exhibition meets us with a long series of paintings which excavate and scratch a theme. Capable in his use
of brush and paint, figures in the paintings in which there is no sense of gravity reminds us tribes in the Old Testament: they
seem to be in search of a compact with God concerning their collective destiny. This is not the same God that is felt in the
Western painting and that illuminates the schemes. It is down to earth or it has never risen. Its distance is designated
according to our position to the paintings, but it is more distanced than the God in the schemes. The landscape is composed
of dry stones and earth, figures look like they scratched their way out with brush, kneaded with earth and sculpted out of
stone. They are still.
While some of the female figures scrutinize us like Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, paint starts pitting as soon as it is
applied unlike the one Picasso used heartily. They are the elegy of an artist who became the witness of the degradation of
a destiny and the birth pain of another. They recall Xenophon's Anabasis. It is the adventure of people who realized that their
destiny is no longer in their hands as they depart from the familiar world, sea shores towards upper Mesopotamia following
a war which they did not know why they fought or lost. They are now uninvited guests at these foreign lands. Return, which
is named as Catabasis, is more compelling and full of challenges. The only remedy is to avoid the disperse of their troops.
As the vanguards shouted "Talatta, Talatta - Sea, Sea!" as they saw the sea near Sourmena after reaching Black Sea
mountains through the coasts of Tigris river, they reached the familiar world.
Erkan's paintings are in a way a catabatic journey. The universe inhabited by the figures is far away from the sea. There is a
long road ahead to reach there, a road though which they will be tested."
- This essay was written by Feyzan Yaman.
