Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu, 1970

Born in Konya in 1970, Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu began his training at the Department of Painting at Dokuz Eylül University, Faculty of Fine Arts, in 1990, and graduated in 1996. During that time, the artist continued to pursue his practice in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Istanbul.

Zümrütoğlu employs an expressionistic attitude in his works, and focuses on the figure. The individual is never a solitary form, but a central element in a larger conceptual formation portraying existential agonies and contemporary anxieties. We see the subjects’ inner worlds, but they also function as mirrors of society. The layers of paint overlapping on the canvas document unconscious movements through the production process, despite the fact that the content was formed largely consciously.

Zümrütoğlu structures “Tribal Volgata” as one part of a triptych, a format commonly used in Christianity to portray religious narratives. Here it lacks a theological aspect, instead addressing art as a phenomenon with its specific rules and working orders, much like religion. The artist symbolically depicts the rules and movements of art-religion through a figure formed with detailed brushwork and blots of paint. A lamp hanging from the ceiling of the half-lit room swings toward the side that is illuminated. Real and imaginary elements meld into one another.