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I have participated in several exhibitions in 2022. More happened than I expected. Things that i wished, happened. So, three exhibitions for 2022: Locked People, Fusion Arts, Dialogue. I'll talk about these in the following.

Locked People

Locked people (LockedPeople) took place between14th of April 2022-10th of May 2022 at the Rotenberg-Uzunov Gallery in Bucharest and was a special experience in many ways.

First of all, it was my first solo exhibition. In other words, the first exhibition where I exhibited only myself and not with other artists. Since the first exhibition, I wanted to enclose a space only in my thoughts. The size of the place where I had this opportunity was ideal, as the gallery is small and I didn't want to exhibit many works. Rotenberg-Uzunov1 Constantin Esarcu Street. Near the Athenaeum.

Secondly, it was a project-exhibition. All the works argue the same idea, namely that people have thoughts that they find harder to talk about and they create mechanisms to block these thoughts inside their minds. As these mechanisms are personal, I illustrated each "portrait" with a different mechanism.

Third, it was the first painting project to which I added a digital component. To each of the four portraits, I made an augmented reality app accessible from Instagram. To access the apps, we installed 4 QR codes in the gallery. Once the code is scanned with a phone, the app for each painting is accessed. This requires access to the camera. Framing the painting in the angle of view, the 3D version of the painting will appear on the phone screen, which we can interact with. The goal is to unlock these characters, to hear the "blocked" thoughts. To unlock them, we need a code, or a key. By pointing the phone's camera at the "key" panel, we will see either a code or a key on the screen for one of the panels. We use the new information to unlock the portraits. Inside we find tapes with recordings of people's thoughts. In the following link you can visit the virtual version of this exhibition. By clicking on the blue dots, you can see how everything I have already described works.

[Click here to visit the exhibition]

This exhibition has charged me with energy. I was there for many hours over many days. There were a lot of visitors. Their curiosity was mainly about the technological side, as they had never seen such paintings before. We also had a few more special visitors: Horațiu Mălăele, Daniel Buzdugan, David Saranga.

Equally special was the visit of my sister - Nuray, who is a regular at the events I attend.

A few days later, the works were bought by one of the gallery's co-founders, Mr Rotenberg.

There have been TV interviews. Aleph News, ProTV, visited the gallery and we talked.

Another article about the exhibition, here [propagarta].

Fusion Arts

Fusion Arts took place betweeb 24th-25th of September 2022 at Noblesse Palace in Bucharest. It was my second participation in this art event. The exhibition brought together paintings and sculptures. I participated with only two paintings:

Stop looking for your angel, Father - painting made to illustrate the poem with the same name in the illustrated volume of Răzvan Ionescu.

Noise - painting that is available for purchase in embstudio shop.

Dialogue

Dialogue it was a very interesting experience. It happened on 14 December 2022, for just a few hours, in Medgidia, at the Ioan N. Roman House of Culture.

Disclaimer about the Dialogue exhibition

All of my work in this exhibition was printed on paper for the sole purpose of participating in the exhibition. These works on paper are not for sale. The works available for sale are available on the embstudio.ro website, in the Shop section, as:

• prints on canvas, mounted on 60x90cm chassis, in a single edition (no more than one copy). Exception are the Locked people paintings. For information, please contact me;
• paper, limited edition, 30x40cm.

The article continues after the pictures.

Dialogue was the idea of Mr Mircea Costea. Mircea is a plastic artist from Medgidia, with a considerable portfolio. He and my father were colleagues, hence the title of the exhibition. It is both a dialogue between generations and a dialogue between techniques: the traditional technique, in acrylic paints, and the digital technique, with which I work.

Mircea has been following my work for a few years and called me one day to suggest we do this event together. I embraced the idea immediately. It was very unexpected for me, as it was also the first time I was invited to exhibit without knocking on doors myself. You don't forget these things. Moreover, he told me that he wanted to dedicate the event to the Turkish-Tatar community in Medgidia, as he has many friends from this community, and December 13 is the day of the Tatar ethnicity. I thought it was a nice gesture and I felt proud, as I am from Medgidia and I am also Turkish and Tatar.

On the day in question, many more people came than I expected. I chatted with people, got questions about the paintings. I'm grateful for the people who took the time to come and for the people who made the event possible.

My parents came too. I think it was the first exhibition they could get to, the others were in Bucharest or other cities. I remember one thing my father said after we came back home:

It's like an event like this makes people better.

Below an Alpha Media material. The scroller can be found below the clip, but also on the YouTube scroll bar.

Unwinder:

00:00 - Mr. Erol Murad - representative of Mehmet Niyazi Cultural Association, introduction.
01:20 - Prof. Echrem Gafar - representative of the Tatar ethnic group, on the significance of 13 December.
13:55 - Mr. Mircea Costea - about how the exhibition came to be.
16:30 - Ersin - about my work in art.
20:45 - Mr. Erol Murad - awarding of diplomas
21:30 - prof. Echrem Gafar - outro
23:23 – Exhibition

At the end of 2021 I wanted 2 things for 2022: to have a solo exhibition and to have at least one augmented reality work on display. They happened and I can only be grateful that I met the people who made it possible and that I had the power to create.

Other art-related projects in 2022 include illustration projects for three volumes of poetry. But more on these projects in another article.

For 2023 I want to have a revelation, to bring something extra to the art world. Until then, I'm thinking.

What you don't see on social media, due to the non-disclosure agreement I work under, is that I'm learning something new almost daily to expand my skill set, and all of this will eventually come to fruition in the form of new ideas for my art as well.

The older you get, the fewer things happen for the first time. The more you manage to find things to do for the first time, the younger you stay. Curious.

Ersin