Emirhan Eren’s works are about the nature of randomness. The traces of watercolour upon the large paper surfaces appear, at first glance, as abstract blots. Ostensibly the sudden and momentary splatters of a gigantic brush, it is later revealed upon closer examination that these images are wholly constructed. The majority of the triptychs and diptychs possess a similarity, even symmetry unexpected in random imagery. It appears as the consecutive hand gestures of a hand that remains the same in all physical conditions.
These blots on the paper stand at a point where they’d leave questions unanswered about whether they’re the mark of a performative painting; whether they’re the product of an abstract painting as well as a formalist one or whether they’re the sign of an object in a representative sense. They leave an impression based on similarity, and on the relationship between the water and the material. While being reminiscent on highly individual scale, of a face, an animal’s hide or of flesh and bones, the traces that are initially conceived as accidental prevent our focus from such a cluster of meaning in such a fashion. It is equally difficult to predict the motion. In this sense, there is a language that veers towards neither figuration, nor towards abstraction. It is not possible to deduce how much the artist has left things to nature or how much he opted for premeditated design. Perhaps this is the central issue, after all. Objects that demonstrate water and paint bending inward and stretching outward; flowing, stopping, dispersing, showing the intensity of its drop, occasionally slowing it while assuming or relinquishing its form. It is possible to conjecture that these are organic diagrams that surface from within an ocean of infinite possibilities. The most captivating point of their allure, however, stems from the possession of intelligence in this organicism – not unlike the self-programming constructs of the future, in which software and hardware are by no means distinct.
Kerem Ozan Bayraktar