Nurettin Erkan, a young artist who graduated from the Painting Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University, opened his second solo exhibition at the Press Museum in Çemberlitaş. Having participated in various group exhibitions until now, Erkan, who opened his second solo exhibition in just seven months, says, "As far as I can remember, I have never fully been inside any particular atmosphere," and adds, "From this, you can conclude: at that time, I never truly felt or had the opportunity to live anything entirely." However, the opposite of this conclusion could also be considered, and while I will not claim this as a definitive judgment, there is something I believe to be certain: one of the best ways to perceive or feel something is to step outside of it, to stand apart from it. For the questioning of reality, perhaps being in a place that is completely opposite to it could be the most ideal.
For this reason, in an interview for my previous exhibition, I had said, "If a person could elevate themselves and look down from above at the world they are also in, probably the most intense thing they would do would be a smile mixed with sorrow. Under the light of this smile, we could protect ourselves. However, this ability of ours is very limited, and we are left alone, facing the suffering human beings who are confronted with this smile mixed with sorrow."
However, once we are able to do this, everything will become so much more alienated; everything we create to protect ourselves will become increasingly absurd. But this act of alienation, while confronting us with this feeling, will also offer us the possibility of finding more human, familiar things beyond alienation.
The traces of our identity are somewhere far from our culture, outside of us. Because culture is, for the most part, not something that belongs to us; it is more like something that occupies us. The fact that culture or art critiques itself, or becomes its own enemy, is, in my view, due to this reason. The pressure of culture on human nature, even if it tries to distance itself from human nature, cannot easily succeed. Even if it approaches the idea of abandoning human nature, it cannot completely eradicate it. Even if a person approaches the idea of abandoning the talents repressed within their nature, these talents will continue to live on, deep within, and eventually, the person will have to confront them. In this sense, the world will always remain intense. However, considering our alienation or the development of the world, it can be assumed that the destruction would be quite significant. I must point out that trying to find a cause, an explanation, or a justification for human emotions is not correct, and that everything I have thought here cannot be the direct cause of my paintings. However, one can start to make sense of it from this point.
Cumhur'yet Newspaper, 1992