In Eksen, Özbaşaran places the relationship between time and space at the center of his work. By dividing the surface with a horizon line, he highlights how experienced time interacts with and merges the past and the future. In his previous series, he transferred photographs of archaeological sites, old buildings, spaces, and objects onto the canvas and then structured the compositions through paint interventions. In this series, however, he does not include any external elements, instead creating an imaginary landscape on a surface with clearly defined boundaries. The works, produced in uniform size and spacing, are distinguished by variations in texture, color, and light.
Özbaşaran recalls his childhood in the small, quiet town of Çorlu, which rapidly transformed through industrialization, with fertile farmland giving way to factories and buildings. The traces of this transformation led the artist on a conscious journey regarding the concept of space. In Eksen, he concentrates on recalling, through painting, the spatial experience, landscape, and horizon line that have been lost during urbanization
Erman Özbaşaran
Born in 1982 in Çorlu, Erman Özbaşaran completed his undergraduate studies at Marmara University, Department of Painting. In 2012, he participated in a residency program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and in 2015, he joined the residency at Fondazione Il Bisonte per lo Studio dell’Arte Grafica in Florence. He has held two solo exhibitions: Opere d’Arte su Carta (Robert F. Kennedy International House, Florence, 2015) and Umut Olasılığı (Art On İstanbul, 2017). Özbaşaran continues his artistic practice in his studio in Istanbul.
