I follow the work of Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu closely for many years now, and have written quite a lot about it. His painterly oeuvre is stringent and consequent regarding form and concept. Nevertheless, the power of his paintings increases year by year, and every time he calls me to his studio, he manages to surprise me with new painterly developments, aesthetics and ideas. Showing a great balance between abstraction and figuration as well as intellectual concept and spontaneous emotion, his oeuvre results from analytical reviews of the dramas and traumas of our time. His work can be understood as a radicalization of Neo-Expressionism, whereas the current series can be seen in the tradition of Eugene Schönebeck and the early Georg Baselitz. With the expressionists of the 20th century, Zümrütoğlu shares the will to cause alienation and deformation regarding figuration, colour, and composition. He also shares the avant-garde’s interest in a physical immediacy between the creator and the actual act of the creation, where a highly authentic trace, a personal mark of the artist gives the piece individuality, and auratic power. Here, spontaneity, improvisation, and interaction become key-words during the artwork’s evolution. Different from classic expressionists though, Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu’s works are not results of a sudden explosion of creativity and emotion. They are not marks of time, which refer to a certain state of the mind of the artist. His painting process is always shifting between spontaneous acting and careful consideration, as he varies the speed of his artistic production. After spontaneous blasts of colours and wild brush strokes, he always steps back in order to review the work. Then, he gets back to the painting just to fall again into a creative outburst, which a moment later will again be analyzed and reconsidered. This dialectic painting process leads Erdoğan to a path between emotion and ratio.  Also in the current series, explosions of paint manifest his existence in the works. In this sense, a connection to Artaud – whom he also admires – becomes obvious, as the artist shares with him an interest in the production of an existential language of the human body. That is why his work wavers between spontaneous feelings and calculated rationality. Though, let us never forget that despite its emotional expressiveness, and formal power, his oeuvre always posses a socio-political commitment. He is and was never a formalist but an engaged painter who lets his work speak up against the cruelty and inhumanity of our time.

I love the current series of paintings! Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu again succeeded in letting his oeuvre formally and conceptually evolve. Of course, there is still a strong connection to the series of the past years, in which he managed to develop his own personal handwriting. In his earlier works and exhibitions, such as “Ya da” (“Or”) in the gallery Pi-Artworks in 2009, he became famous for his large-sized paintings, which showed a wonderful balance between abstraction and figuration, while critically commenting on current disastrous events. The works in the show “Grammar of the other” at Gallery Tammen & Partner, 2011 in Berlin, had a stronger figurative nature in comparison to his earlier paintings. This was underlined by his use of the grid, the application of black outer contours and the always nearly monochrome dark background. These works appeared simpler than the earlier ones. In the „Ya da“ series, the figures of his works found themselves in cellar-like interiors. They were dark and scary. In the show in Berlin, the figures were in abstract exterior spaces and often in landscape-like environments. They stood alone, and seemed lost. In his previous works, the figures were involved in actions or activities with other figures. Now they were trying alone to find their way in the chaos of their existence. In his first solo show at Empire in 2012, he exhibited under title Cosmic Violencepaintings that were much darker and more abstract. Also they were more mysterious and intrinsically oriented than all previous works. His interest in external matters was more subversive in these paintings, so that they seemed to refer rather to the painter or the painting itself than to any outer context or environment.

In the present series exhibited at Empire, the figurative character became stronger while the grade of abstraction decreased. Mostly single figures are depicted in interior like spaces. The protagonists are now clearer formulated, and stand out against the rather graphic and illustrative background, where each part of the space (wall, floor, ceiling) is concretely presented. Sometimes, only some geometrical and graphic sketches of a space are recognizable. Just like Francis Bacon, Zümrütoğlu only uses a few lines and strokes to articulate a room. The actual being or visuality of the space occurs in the mind of the spectator. Whereas the environment is rather simple, the figures are complex, fragmental, and expressive. Although there is a strong sense of dynamism, movement, and speed caused by Zümrütoğlu’s hasty brush strokes, the figures seem still, as if they were frozen in a heavy movement. The depicted monster-like protagonists obviously resemble human beings. These deformed mutants carry the burden of being alive in a dystopic world, and their physical appearance is based on the violence of their surroundings. They do not hide their pain, and do not pretend to be fine. Also, the figures are not shy or ashamed because of their look, because they directly face the spectator in order to confront him with the tragedy of their existence, which reflects on and relates to the various crises we are all living with.

That is why Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu’s pieces are outstanding examples of contemporary painting and that is why he deserves his reputation as an important artist. He is not falling into the traps of the shiny market oriented art world, which prefers festivalism and spectacle over critical content and alternative aesthetics. Andy Warhol foresaw this tendency fifty years ago, when he exposed that everything is pop and pop is everything. Guy Debord claimed already in 1967 in his text The Society of the Spectacle that everything that once was directly lived has moved away from real experience to become pure representation. These mediated, often populist experiences of the second reality have a huge impact on our visual culture. The way we see and understand images today has drastically changed due to the impact of the visual bombardment of the art and culture industry. In this context, visual artists have to question their practice, as they always contribute to societies’ visual culture.

Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu’s work is significant because it causes a massive impact on the spectator, which goes beyond the nonchalance of the contemporary art world. His mix of figuration and abstraction, as well as his interest to critically comment on issues of the immediate present, is rare these days. Zümrütoğlu’s particular strength is that he never lets the paintings to be obtrusive, didactic or polemical. Here, great form and attractive aesthetic meets intelligent content. Due to the paintings’ iconographic and compositional brokenness, the classical pictorial context is consciously denied by him. That is why it is possible to participate in the shaping of Zümrütoğlu’s worlds of images. So, the spectator is activated and lured to abandon the passive attitude of the recipient. The artist succeeds in creating a contemporary oeuvre, which draws upon the accomplishments of late modernism while going beyond pure postmodern eclecticism. With its unique form, and its socio-political commitment, the works contribute to a renovation in the field of painting. This renovation is needed, because painting is in a crisis but it is not dead!