It’s time for varied readings and the intellectual freedom they offer. This freedom eliminates the distances between the arts and reconciles art with everyday life.
To see how Nurettin Erkan's travel stories, what he has seen, listened to, and read along the way reflect on the canvas, and to read the story that follows until reaching the canvas and brush phase on this endless path of art, looking at the paintings and validating this with the text...
Nida Nevra Savcılıoğlu:
How have you dealt with the concept of "the foreign" in your paintings?Nurettin Erkan
Although it's a word we use frequently, I believe we've become so alienated that we hardly know who the foreigner is or what alienation means, and we have become estranged from this knowledge. In an increasingly speculative world where culture, information, and communication networks expand, the space where our identity exists is under pressure and continually shrinking. This contraction puts us in a state of panic. As we run after the allure of life that is expanding and increasing in possibilities, the speed of time is accelerating. Perhaps the foreigner resides in the dilemma between the time of deafening noise, which becomes blunted as it speeds up, and the silence of sensitive stillness, insisting on continuing to alienate. Sometimes I perceive this concept as the void left by a person who has abandoned it, now an impersonal void. The foreigner is no longer a person. This void—or whatever you choose to call it—has long been the subject of my paintings. This is not something new for me. Although I may have named my exhibition for the first time, this concept has always existed. But I thought it should be present in this latest exhibition.Nida Nevra Savcılıoğlu:
Does the name of your exhibition refer to the alienation in the process of becoming the same? Or does it contain allusions beyond that?Nurettin Erkan
Building your art on the foundations of a speculative ideology is one thing; it being a result of your way of existing in the world, and reflecting in your art is another, and it's inevitable for me. In fact, in this second sense, some of the elements you've listed or similar things may completely resurface. I accept that. In this sense, I feel like I am walking alongside my painting. Perhaps sometimes these masters of the two dimensions can think earlier than me and impose the pain of the next one on me. It's very difficult to escape from them. There’s a struggle to surpass them because it should be, or at least that’s how it feels. Rebellion exists everywhere, both in me and in them. The rebellious person has not defined a target for themselves. Rebellion is the essence of their existence. I admire the nature of the foreigner and their stance in that boundless void.Nida Nevra Savcılıoğlu:
What time frame do your works encompass? What result does the partnership of intellectual and formal elements yield?Nurettin Erkan
The paintings in this exhibition are from my works over the past year. If we separate the visual from the intellectual foundation, these paintings are not merely shaped by the development of a certain intellectual foundation. They can be considered as two simultaneous main elements. But I think the visual element is more primary and dominant, containing the intellectual foundation.Nida Nevra Savcılıoğlu:
What can you say about how the details of your personal history reflect in your paintings?Nurettin Erkan
Until I was about three or four years old, we lived in a neighborhood at the foot of a mountain in the Solhan district of Bingöl. The children in the area often suffered from epidemic diseases during the winter months. One day, I had a dream while I was sick with my little sister and brother. In that dream, the three of us were flying side by side in our bedclothes, and my mother was walking anxiously along the small path in the valley, unable to find a cure for our dying. The weather was gloomy and windy, and everything was flowing like a line of poetry. Considering similar images that started with this and repeated often later, I can say that the visuals came long before. According to Levi-Strauss, the position of an artwork in the context of visual art is an intermediary position between the object and language. It is neither a complete reflection of nature nor a system of signs with a material relationship to what it tries to represent. Moreover, nature reflects not as itself but through an image. Change is the aspect of this image that influences its visuality, keeps it constantly dynamic, and is indispensable for me.Nida Nevra Savcılıoğlu:
What can you say about the changes you observe in your paintings and the results of your experiments?Nurettin Erkan: The paintings I created in previous years had softer forms. Now they have taken on a harsher structure, and the colors have become increasingly vivid. Additionally, when drawing first enters the painting, it creates another layer of existence and splits the painting in two. It’s a mixture of figures clad in paint and completely bare drawings... They occupy the same space, but their natures are entirely different, and these two natures revolve around each other in a mirrored manner.
Nida Nevra Savcılıoğlu:
You constantly emphasize the importance of the philosophical foundation in your paintings. Where does this source of thought come from? How much has your transition between East and West affected this?Nurettin Erkan
Philosophically, the individual's existence problem converges with the artist's urge to create art and the essence of art’s expression. This essence, while searching for its own way of existing, finds itself in a journey. The journey is always about knowing "the other," the other person, the other time, or everything else... Perhaps always becoming "the other." Edip Cansever suddenly articulates this: "O image, why are you two?"... This is the nature of the foreigner's existence.Intercultural and interspatial journeys contribute to this, and the migration to the next one places a special memory on the previous one, making it unforgettable. The past, with its cultural world, becomes clearer instead of blurred and is reborn. I believe this strengthens the foreigner's memory, and the frequent mental journeys outside the moment enhance their perception of the world.
In this context, I consider myself fortunate. In the East, I walked fifteen kilometers on desolate roads just to buy a pack of cigarettes. While walking on these endless barren roads, I heard how silence transforms into sound; the buzzing of flies and crickets, and the rustling of wheat fields under the scorching sun turned into loud noises, while the sounds of my footsteps on gravel roads caused great explosions in my ears.
Nida Nevra Savcılıoğlu:
I believe the perception of time in the East and its transformation in the West also play a significant role...Nurettin Erkan
Time in the East is formed by such experiences. In the long, electricity-free winter nights, the static noise my father created by tuning the shortwave radio among stations might be my first images. Back then, the sounds mixed with static coming from these stations seemed to me to be coming from the other side of the imaginary great wall at the end of our neighborhood. No one had any idea about what was beyond that wall. Perhaps I discovered contemporary world literature or poetry behind that wall. I think the journey from the black tents in Şerefettin plateau to the villages and from there to the cities, including Istanbul, created overlapping concepts of time. The temporal life of memory is not tied to the body or space. These phenomena seem to search for a place for themselves in the visual identities of figures in my paintings, whether in a spatial or non-spatial context. In my visual perspective towards figures, there seem to be traces of these identities in their actions, relationships, and all movements in the void.Nida Nevra Savcılıoğlu:
What are the fundamental life factors that trigger your creativity? At which layer of your pyramid of poetry and literature creation do you find yourself? What are the indicators of interdisciplinary transition in your paintings?Nurettin Erkan
As I mentioned earlier, this is a conversion of an existence problem into an inner impulse to create art. I believe that’s the fundamental factor. On the other hand, regardless of whether a person creates art or not, there are countless factors contributing to their formation. Setting aside all these countless factors, for now, I can say that what triggers me is the act of painting itself. However, I believe the artist’s responsibility is significant, and this responsibility should not only concern their own production area. I speak of this responsibility for those who are artists; because becoming an artist later is challenging, in my view. You cannot suggest someone become an artist; if you do, it is because you believe they can. In this context, an artist necessarily has a connection with other disciplines. I can’t even imagine the contrary. Besides this natural interest, there may be special inclinations as well, that’s separate.If I need to adopt a more subjective approach, I liken my relationship with works or artists in painting and other art forms to a kinship. Artists with whom I can establish a kind of closeness or fateful unity profoundly affect me. Among these are mainly painters, writers, philosophers, theorists, musicians, and filmmakers. In general, painting feels like the visual aspect of existence and the embodiment of these art forms for me. First, you see it, then you hear its voice, and perhaps then you smell it... Immediately after comes meaning, philosophy, poetry... Poetry, too, seems to be the smoothed aesthetic of these arts, and I know I cannot do without it.
Sometimes a line lingers in my mind for years, distilled, patiently waiting for the right moments and places to come alive repeatedly and to multiply its meaning within the magical time of continuity. Paul Celan's line, "In the tear ducts of your / the sea holds its promise," circles around, meeting Tagore's line, "For some pains, there must be endless sources of tears in the heart." While Camus searches for evidence that the world belongs to itself in the arid deserts of the mind, Hilmi Yavuz forms the line, "In the sand of words, there was a refuge," and perhaps you can encounter the myriad states of the foreigner (the figure) fluttering in that void. You might even go further back and see the image of three brothers flying in white amidst a deep green and windy valley, with their mother hurrying down the path below them with urgency and skill.
