Today we’d like to introduce you to Hayri Esmer.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My story may not have begun at a very early age, but it did begin before university, at a time when I was still far from being a professional artist. It was then that my drawings first began to attract the attention of people around me. At the time, I was not fully aware of what I was doing; I simply enjoyed drawing. Yet the people around me seemed to find something meaningful in my work.
Back then, I never imagined that I would become an artist. In fact, I wanted to be a writer. I read novels and short stories, wrote poetry, admired the lives of writers, and drew their portraits. Art felt to me less like a profession and more like a deeply personal passion.
Everything changed when I entered art school. Almost without realizing it, I found myself completely immersed in art, and from that moment on, I could never leave it behind. I discovered that the subtleties, sensitivities, and emotional depth of human experience could be expressed through color and form in ways that words alone could not fully convey.
For me, art became the deepest way of understanding the city, culture, systems of thought, and, above all, the human psyche. That is why I could never give it up.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There have been two kinds of challenges. The first has to do with artistic production itself; the second concerns the artist’s place within the art world.
The process of making art is often difficult and even painful. Developing a language, choosing a method and material, constructing form and meaning, and creating an image are never easy processes. For me, the most difficult part is making decisions: deciding what to create, how to create it, and what form it should take. Once that decision is made, the process often becomes pleasurable. I find painting and making work extremely enjoyable, and even playful.
On the other hand, entering and becoming part of the art world as an artist is perhaps one of the most difficult challenges. I see this as an obstacle faced by almost every artist. I believe that major museums and institutions establish a certain hegemony; they produce and legitimize a particular understanding of art and present it to the public as dominant.
This one-sided, hegemonic view becomes an obstacle to artistic freedom. It often creates difficulties in the recognition and acceptance of different forms of art and different kinds of artists. Today, I see many major institutions becoming instruments of trends produced within the culture industry.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am an artist and an academic. At the university, I teach and conduct research in the fields of art, contemporary art, and experimental art. Alongside my academic work, I make art, exhibit my works in Turkey and internationally, and also provide consultancy in the field of art.
My artistic practice includes painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and spatial design. I am particularly interested in innovative approaches to the exhibition and presentation of contemporary art.
In my work, I redefine the multilayered structure of contemporary life and the human psyche through the city and architecture. I am drawn to the flawed, dysfunctional, and damaged aspects of the city — those parts that seem to require repair. I try to construct the architecture of this damaged and defective structure.
I do not think the method I use can be clearly or easily defined. Sometimes I draw hundreds of hair-thin lines with a brush on canvases more than two meters wide, using the line in its most primitive and non-representational state. Sometimes I create compositions by placing television screens side by side. At other times, I cover an image with lines again and again until I almost erase it.
In fact, the material, method, and language can change according to the concept I am working with. For example, in my sculptures, I bring together circular forms of the same or similar size in an irregular way, creating an asynchronous structure. Similarly, in my labyrinth works, I construct an unfamiliar kind of architecture — one in which we remain trapped, wander endlessly, and cannot find a way out.
What’s next?
These days, I am working on a series titled System Failure, which I began some time ago. I find it interesting to reveal the failures within systems that appear to function perfectly, and to expose the defects embedded in their structures.
After all, every system is, in some way, a flawed structure. I believe that one of the greatest flaws of our time is the assumption that all systems function perfectly. As life becomes increasingly optimized, flaws and deficiencies become more visible. And as they become more visible, our dissatisfaction increases.
I consider these visible failures important, and they are what I am interested in. For this reason, both in my paintings and in my three-dimensional works, I try to construct a damaged organism, a structure that does not function properly.
This idea has become a central concept in my artistic practice and now forms the foundation of my current work.
Pricing:
- between 500 – 14.000 Dollars
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.hayriesmer.com/tr
- Instagram: @hayriesmerr @minimalandcontemporary
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/?locale=tr_TR
- Twitter: https://x.com/home?lang=tr
