Ekrem Yalçındağ
Ekrem Yalçındağ (born 1964 in Gölbaşı, Turkey) brings together seemingly disparate worlds in his paintings. Painting merges with Conceptual art, the ornaments of his home country of Turkey are combined with impressions of Western European Art Nouveau, while plant-like forms are joined to form interwoven, geometric all-over structures, and visual perceptions of concrete objects dissolve into pure color shapes. Behind these amalgamations lies the painter’s ability to transform the stimuli around him – things seen, read, learned, and experienced – into a distinctive pictorial world.
That the artist overcomes formal and intellectual borders in the process also mirrors his career. Yalçındağ studied at the Academy of Art in Izmir before he went to Frankfurt in 1994, where he studied at the Städelschule with Thomas Bayrle and Hermann Nitsch, two artists who are extremely different. One is a Pop Art conceptualist famous for his serial forms, while the other is a painter and a wild actionist artist.
Ekrem Yalçındağ has been able to integrate both these influences into his work. The result has been pictures – like “Impressions from the Street” – that have a repetitive structure while also enabling us to experience the physical and sensuous quality of color. Through his impasto application of paint in layers that are several millimeters thick, the material of paint acquires a physicality of its own, stressing the picture’s status as an object. The title refers to visual impressions that inspired the artist. In this regard, “Impressions from the Street” is also a typical example of Yalçındağ’s round pictures, for the color palette in these round formats is always based on the impressions of colors he sees in everyday life – colors on consumer items, posters, and the like. Because the motif has been removed from his works, what remain are iridescent color schemes that are autonomous, as according to the credo of the Zurich Concretes.
In a similar vein as these concentrically painted round pictures (which he began working on in the 1990s), Yalçındağ’s works with flower patterns are also not necessarily painted by the artist himself – hence, the conceptual aspect of his work. His precise preliminary drawings and sheets of detailed instructions enable him to let others – namely his assistants – execute these works. Ekrem Yalçındağ’s artworks were presented in 2013 in the exhibition “Hot Spot Istanbul” in the Museum Haus Konstruktiv.
Britta Schröder
That the artist overcomes formal and intellectual borders in the process also mirrors his career. Yalçındağ studied at the Academy of Art in Izmir before he went to Frankfurt in 1994, where he studied at the Städelschule with Thomas Bayrle and Hermann Nitsch, two artists who are extremely different. One is a Pop Art conceptualist famous for his serial forms, while the other is a painter and a wild actionist artist.
Ekrem Yalçındağ has been able to integrate both these influences into his work. The result has been pictures – like “Impressions from the Street” – that have a repetitive structure while also enabling us to experience the physical and sensuous quality of color. Through his impasto application of paint in layers that are several millimeters thick, the material of paint acquires a physicality of its own, stressing the picture’s status as an object. The title refers to visual impressions that inspired the artist. In this regard, “Impressions from the Street” is also a typical example of Yalçındağ’s round pictures, for the color palette in these round formats is always based on the impressions of colors he sees in everyday life – colors on consumer items, posters, and the like. Because the motif has been removed from his works, what remain are iridescent color schemes that are autonomous, as according to the credo of the Zurich Concretes.
In a similar vein as these concentrically painted round pictures (which he began working on in the 1990s), Yalçındağ’s works with flower patterns are also not necessarily painted by the artist himself – hence, the conceptual aspect of his work. His precise preliminary drawings and sheets of detailed instructions enable him to let others – namely his assistants – execute these works. Ekrem Yalçındağ’s artworks were presented in 2013 in the exhibition “Hot Spot Istanbul” in the Museum Haus Konstruktiv.
Britta Schröder
Works by Ekrem Yalçındağ
