Hayri Esmer

Hayri Esmer is an artist working across painting, printmaking, and installation. His works interrogate the layered structure of contemporary life through line, color, and spatial tension.

In his artistic practice, the interaction among line, color, and surface is treated not merely as a formal arrangement but as a conceptual structure. The pictorial surface is conceived as a field of tension where forces such as vibration, density, and layered order coexist. His works can be read as a visual examination of the fragile structures that emerge amid the uncertainties and tensions of contemporary urban life.

The following interview was conducted on January 20, 2026, at the artist's studio in Eskişehir, and focuses on Esmer's creative process and the intellectual framework shaping his evolving artistic practice.

Hatice Bengisu: How does the process of creating a work unfold for you? How would you describe this process in terms of your working methods, flow of thought, and experience of space and time?

Hayri Esmer: This process naturally varies depending on the work. However, I generally proceed according to the requirements of the preliminary planning I have carried out. It is aimed at anticipating how elements such as theme, composition, material, and color will be employed; which strategy will guide the construction of formal structure; and ultimately, what the intended effect will be. Throughout the process, I move forward without disregarding the work's possible alternatives and its potential for transformation. I do not view the creation of a work solely as technical execution, as shaping, painting, or forming materials. Since all of these steps and processes directly influence the formation of meaning, the artist's oversight becomes inevitable. In other words, form and meaning emerge together, intertwined; as the process advances and new formal elements enter the work, meaning is reconstituted and diverges from what came before. This simultaneity and parallelism between form and meaning becomes a significant source of tension for the artist. The suitability of formal choices to their intended aims matters greatly, because how form is constructed and the cultural associations of that construction are important to me.

We must also factor in the reality that, during a work's creation, our connection with the outside world and our thinking processes are not stable. Therefore, however rarely, a new experience gained during this process can compel us to reconstruct and revise our perspective from scratch. Or we may wish to attempt a new formal experiment, a new mode of relating, that occurs to us in the moment. I value modes of relating, because my painting is a structure built upon a network of relations. One must not forget that this is a layered process encompassing both time and space. For instance, the interruption you introduce into making a work, and the resulting gap, can alter your relationship with it. I am unable to complete any work that I have set aside for a long time or left thinking I will finish it later. More precisely, I cannot complete it according to the thoughts I held at the moment I set it down. Of course I do finish it, but it no longer carries any quality of the earlier experience or state of mind. For this reason, I must point out that the relationship I establish with the work is shaped, at each encounter and depending on time, by the necessity of rethinking it, restructuring it, and forming new layers of meaning through new connections. The work provokes me in this way; it pushes me. This relationship with the work does, one way or another, come to an end at a certain point: when I no longer have any proposal to add, to contribute, or to transform it, the work is finished for me. In fact, what "ends" or is "exhausted" here is always the artist. I always think of it this way. Therefore, there is no true ending; there is only exhaustion within a given context and timeframe. In my view, this is also where what we call the limit of the artist's creativity resides. The point at which we can no longer lend a new context or value to the work, and thus where we stop, is the boundary that defines our creativity. Beyond it lies an ambiguous, indefinable domain that cannot be converted into choices by "that artist," and it holds no meaning for them.

Hatice Bengisu: When we consider the time before the work and the time during its execution as a "work-time," in Didi-Huberman's terms, what meaning does the pre-work time acquire in your creative process? How do you interpret its relationship to the process of execution?

Hayri Esmer: Yes, Huberman's view is significant… He speaks of generating multiplicity through the work's layered structure and its relationship with other temporalities. In fact, in some of my earlier remarks about the formation of the work, I mentioned ideas such as indecision, leaving things to time, accumulating different temporalities, layering, regarding what I have done with skepticism, and making room for surprises. All of this demonstrates that a work cannot be explained solely by the time in which it is produced; it may exist within a field where many different temporalities converge. This is a highly complex situation in which many disparate elements are intertwined and in conflict. When setting out to create a work, we certainly possess a great deal of data, experience, and foresight, and these can serve as guiding factors. Yet the process is not that straightforward or simple. Sometimes it may indeed be a journey in which everything unfolds according to our experiences and as planned. But beyond those experiences, it can also become a situation steered by the subconscious, momentary associations, unpredictable imaginings, and chance. This often makes for a turbulent, conflictual, and oscillating process. In truth, when we say a work is finished, it is frequently tied directly to our psychological state at that moment. For me, this state is one of openness to new experience. Consequently, my relationship with the work has less to do with my physical presence there than with where I am mentally. In this sense, "work-time" is bound to the character of this journey. Thinking of it this way, the time of the work, for me, is not its date of production but the history of the layers of meaning carried by its images, the experiences, and the accumulations the artist possesses.

Hatice Bengisu: During which parts of the day do you find working most productive? What kinds of factors motivate you to begin a work? Does the process unfold through an intuitive inner rhythm, or does it develop through a defined working discipline?

Hayri Esmer: I have no set hour or time slot for being in the studio. I cannot plan it that way. I begin when I feel ready. This can be before breakfast, after it, or even at night. In terms of scheduling, I do not have a particularly disciplined working routine. My studio is on the upper floor of my house… I take full advantage of that. Even when I am about to go to bed, I can change my mind at the last moment and head up to the studio. That is something truly wonderful. Apart from these exceptional moments, I generally need a long stretch of time to work. When I do work, I spend the entire day in the studio and do not go out. If I have to go to school during the day, I work in the evenings and on weekends. I believe the ability to create without regard to time constraints makes an artist more productive.

The motivational factors for beginning a work can vary. But to put it briefly: I frequently take visual notes, drawings, sketches, rough studies, prompted by thoughts and associations from daily life that strike me, that I consider important, that might serve as material, and that capture my interest. These can be any thought, subject, concept, form, or image that comes to mind at a given moment. But I usually set them aside and let them wait. I do not act on them immediately. I have many such notes ready to be worked on. Sometimes these drawings ripen in my mind; more often, I forget them. From time to time, or when I am about to work, I go through these accumulated drawings one by one and reassess them: are they still valuable to me? Is there something here I can build on? If so, I bring it back to the table and develop it to the point where I can carry it out. At this stage I decide on visual impact, conceptual structure, material choice, composition, and formal structure. I need to establish a framework I will change as little as possible from the outset, because in some compositions, especially on large canvases, making changes later can be very difficult. Yet changes can also become unavoidable. I work in a stop-and-start fashion, and at each pause I reassess the composition, the relational network, and the color. If a change is warranted, I make the necessary interventions. This continues until the work is completed… Of course, all of this applies to the general routine…

One of the most exciting things for me is gathering these notes from daily life and experimenting with their formal possibilities. I generally do not begin a work without first devising alternative compositional options. Options give me the right to choose, and this leads to the emergence of alternatives across different data, techniques, materials, dimensions, and series. More often than not, the desire to think through new alternatives makes it impossible to continue certain works I have already started. That is why I sometimes leave series unfinished. In effect, I am only producing trial versions of the notes I want to realize. I wait with curiosity to see what the outcome will be… This is the most enjoyable aspect of the process… and for this reason, unfortunately, I often do not get the chance to carry many works and experiments to completion. Because my working method demands a great deal of detail and time, finishing a piece usually takes long. The labor-intensive dimension is very heavy… Producing quick, spontaneous, session-based works is simply not possible for me. If I cannot complete a work, I set it aside. This can sometimes mean months, even years, of waiting. I have many works in that state. And when I eventually return to them, they can transform into something entirely different.

Hatice Bengisu: In your artistic practice, how does the concept of the "studio" function as an intellectual and aesthetic space? If we think of the studio not merely as a site of production but also as a space where thought is constructed, how does the relationship between thinking and sensing take shape for you within it?

Hayri Esmer: The studio is, without doubt, a space that harbors many different meanings. Yes, first and foremost it is a "kitchen," a place of making, a place where the artist retreats into solitude, a space where one builds one's freedom. All of these are true. But for me, it is above all a space of thinking where the desire to construct the new through my own tradition clashes fiercely; where uncertainty prevails, intense tension is felt, and decisions are extremely difficult to make. It is an environment where I feel acute pressure, where tension is generated, and where hesitation reaches its peak. A place where, in a world of infinite possibilities, we cannot escape making choices. Not only before and during the making of a work, but always. Because the studio is precisely such an environment: a place where risk, doubt, and hesitation cannot be eliminated in pursuit of absolute certainty.

In the face of this tension and intensity, I frequently choose to step away from the studio at short intervals. I value this in order to disconnect, to look from the outside, and to think afresh. In these moments, what I most prefer is to forget. In order to begin again. For me, the studio is, in a sense, a place where I consciously wish to forget much of what I know. I wish to forget because I sometimes feel that knowledge also acts as a "constraint," an "obstacle" standing in the way of my freedom.

As I forget, I believe I will shed burdens, become lighter, and, by extracting myself from possible influences, become more fully myself. At this juncture, forgetting is the concept that nourishes me most. The same holds for daily life. For me, knowledge is something that must be thought through again and again, continually reexamined. That is why I believe forgetting "rejuvenates" memory and purges it of the unnecessary. In this sense, I find the purity, simplicity, and plainness that can be attained to be important. The studio is a place that rescues me from the banality of everyday life. A place where, by "distancing" myself from life, I try to develop thoughts and interpretations about it.

Hatice Bengisu: Do you experience states such as "waiting," "giving up," or "starting over" during the process of creating a work?

Hayri Esmer: Of course… First of all, I must admit that I experience a certain indecision during this process, and it can lead me to abandon the work. Self-criticism is very strong in me, which in turn raises my expectations of the work, and that leads me to set things aside. Among the works I leave waiting in this way, there are those I abandon entirely and those I take up again… If the motivating idea has lost its meaning, I let go completely. However, if what already exists has the potential to evolve, through new ideas, into something I would consider valuable, I do not hesitate to revisit it. I feel no obligation to be consistent with the previous version. On the contrary, because the work often carries different temporalities within it, it turns into a surprising organism. I believe it offers me new formal possibilities. Interesting associations that arise spontaneously, where the temporal difference is perceptible, also open the door to new options. The Itself and Its Shadow series, for instance, began in just this way.

Hatice Bengisu: Your works are distinguished by a layered, permeable, and intricate visual structure. How does the design and sketching process function in the construction of this multilayered structure, and how do sketches influence your intellectual production? Do you carry out your sketches primarily in digital media, or does the process proceed mainly through the paper-and-pencil relationship?

Hayri Esmer: First of all, I should say that the layered condition appeals to me and is very well suited to my way of working. The stacking of forms on top of one another, the suggestion that something is hidden behind them, and the sense that the space behind is not empty. These are things I value. It also interests me as a metaphor: that something is profoundly different from its appearance, that it is more than what it seems, keeps my curiosity alive. If it were possible, I would wish to present not only the thing itself but all the factors connected to and influencing it, all the aspects that constitute it. Because things are never merely what they appear to be at a given moment. They possess different layers, both temporal and relating to their inherent qualities. For me, layering is an attempt to perceive the "moment" and the "thing" together with all the components and relations that constitute and sustain them.

In the Itself and Its Shadow and Covering/Concealing series, for instance, I worked through precisely these paradoxes. In the Covering/Concealing series, I divided the canvas in two and placed the same image on both halves, painting one and drawing the other with lines. I then covered the painted image with multiple layers of overlapping lines in different colors until the image lost its visibility. In the end, the same image existed on both halves of the painting. When viewed, however, only one was visible; the other, although present, could not be seen. In our time, truth and visibility are much-discussed concerns… I conceived this series as an attempt to engage with and interpret the relationship between truth and visibility.

As for the use of sketches: yes, I do use them, depending on the situation. This has been the case for a long time, in earlier engravings, for instance, as well as in series such as Sequential Patterns, Makeshift, System Failure, and Labyrinths. I still have a large number of sketches from the Labyrinths, both digital and drawn on paper. However, I did not use sketches in series such as Lament for Baghdad, Windows, Discontinuity, Itself and Its Shadow, Covering/Concealing, State of Fragmentation, and Megastar. I also value uncertainty and spontaneity in the flow of the work, but given my working method and technique, I need to plan the structure so as not to jeopardize the final effect. This is why I prefer to use sketches. In practice, I rely on them to determine how elements will form a structure on the surface in terms of placement, scale and proportion, and interrelationship. I approach this like architecture, as the skeleton or armature of the building process. In the Labyrinths, for example, because I prize the puzzle-like, irregular, unexpected, and interlocking structural relationships and want them to be present in the finished work, I do not leave their composition to chance and therefore turn to sketches in advance. In these sketches I do not include elements such as color, tone, or line. What concerns me is the proportional relationship of the structure to the canvas surface. In large-scale paintings, this is something of a necessity. The placement, size, and angle of the form on the canvas, the front–back relations, the planes, all become important in terms of proportion. It is, in part, a matter of scale. As the work grows larger, this becomes a method I adopt in order to prevent disturbing anomalies in geometry and structural elements. Beyond that, I prefer the work's course to be guided by my reflexes in the moment. Not being able to predict, leaving certain things to chance, produces more surprises. I enjoy this dimension as well. It feels like a puzzle to me: adding forms to the front and back, removing them, creating spaces, rearranging, laying lines over the top. I build the structure by joining forms together, expanding and extending them.

Hatice Bengisu: How do you strike a balance between intuitive decisions and rational arrangements in the formation of form?

Hayri Esmer: When faced with such a conflict or dilemma, I give priority to the work's impact. In other words, I trust my feelings. I cannot develop warmth toward any work that my feelings have not endorsed, no matter how much time may pass. I do not compromise on the emotional closeness that forms between myself and the work. This does not mean, however, that I exclude rationality. I continue to think about my works before, during, and after their realization. I value the conclusions I arrive at through thinking. In this regard, I certainly strive to draw adequately on both. I use rationality for understanding and analyzing what I do, for exercising judgment, and for ensuring structural coherence; I use intuition for discovery and, at the final stage, for conviction. So I can say that, in the end, I trust my intuition. Or, depending on the nature of the work, sometimes an intuitive and sometimes a rational stance becomes dominant.

Hatice Bengisu: There is a noticeable permeability among your printmaking, painting, and three-dimensional works. Should these disciplines be read as complementary fields within your practice? By what criteria do you choose among them? How do these disciplines affect your way of working and your intellectual orientation?

Hayri Esmer: It pleases me that such a permeability and connection between my works is perceived. For a long time now, I have looked at the concept of the artist in a way that clearly separates it from the figure confined to a single discipline, as we were taught. Once you see it this way, all disciplines and materials become instrumental for the artist. I see it the same way. For me, they are exciting because they open the door to new forms… three-dimensional works especially… addressing similar concepts through different materials and tools offers me new formal possibilities. And, as you say, they nourish one another. Because the ability to think about the same concept in multiple ways and to offer different formal perspectives opens the door to a more encompassing view of the whole. In this sense, they are certainly enriching.

In fact, while making work I try to maintain as free a state of mind as possible. My desire to tackle similar problems through different materials, techniques, and tools stems from the opportunity to examine the problem thoroughly and from multiple angles. As I move between fields, the criterion, I should say, is "compatibility" with my own nature. I proceed on the basis of the fit between what I have accumulated and what I intend to create. In a period when I am striving to build my own world, no criterion or perspective established before me holds any importance. In my view, art, in its broadest sense, is the individual's act of making their own experience enduring, without recognizing any limit of tools or materials. Many things pass through my mind, of course, but I pursue those I can accept and make my own. That it be my own experience, that it excite me, and that it be consistent with my vision. These, I believe, should be the most important criteria. In this sense, my choices naturally and directly influence my thoughts and orientations. I rethink the same things by looking at them from different perspectives and angles. I value rethinking; only then, I believe, can a formal breakthrough be achieved. Is not art, ultimately, a search for new form, new shape, new image? Moreover, each discipline and material, with its specific properties, gives us the opportunity to reconstruct our universe of meaning and affect… the artist cannot avoid this. In this sense, I believe that different disciplines, different materials, and different tools encourage us to think more comprehensively, enrich us, and, most importantly, bring to light the deeper dimensions of our inner world.

Hatice Bengisu: Since we are speaking of these transitions, are there times when the material directs thought? Or does thought shape the material?

Hayri Esmer: Sometimes the desire to use a material that sits on the sidelines, possessing its own distinctive qualities and the potential to generate meaning, does create in me a tendency to produce something related to it. Ready-made materials can acquire value as a source of new meaning when our context and mode of relating to them change. However, this only happens if I am ready and inclined to do so. Outside such exceptional cases, I do not believe material exerts a stimulating effect. Material is generally a chosen and selected tool; it gains significance only insofar as it serves my purpose. Therefore, it becomes inevitable that thought determines and shapes the material. Predominantly, I opt for materials that will contribute to the relationship between meaning and form.

Hatice Bengisu: In your canvas paintings, line and color are your primary means of expression. What is the reason for choosing these tools? What does the memory carried by line and color mean to you?

Hayri Esmer: All components that constitute a painting are, of course, means of expression, but I must say that line and color hold a privileged place for me. Line is important to me in two respects. First: because line has been, for virtually everyone, one of the most fundamental means of expression since ancient times, I hold that it deserves renewed attention. To make it an element of construction serving different purposes, to explore unconventional modes of deploying it, these matter to me. For this reason, I began by altering the way it is used. Its most basic attribute was the capacity to depict and shape the external world, that is, its capacity for abstraction. At this point I asked myself: how far can I strip it of all its potential meaning-generating qualities? If I could answer "purely as itself," I would have found its neutral state. This is, in fact, how my encounter with abstraction came about. One might say that my effort to lend line a new dimension led me to abstraction. It was a somewhat rational move.

Second: I feel that the dense, accumulated structure of line creates a deep emotional resonance in me. Something in it draws me. Sensing this resonance each time I look at it binds me to it ever more tightly. The involuntary sympathy I feel toward the forms produced by dense and layered clusters of line connects me to them emotionally. This attraction is not something the mind can control, because for me this form both reveals and conceals, and that is deeply enigmatic.

As for the part of your question concerning color: on the one hand, color is a tool to which I feel an affinity as part of the emotional resonance I described; on the other, I see it as a highly significant marker of contemporary society. It is something like a memory of today's spectacle-driven world, and this memory contains a great deal. Beginning with Pop Art, color gradually infiltrated every cell of society. More precisely, it became a crucial instrument of consumer culture and the advertising industry, so much so that it became a generator of information untethered from reality, of exaggerated and inauthentic content. Put another way, it became a tool that covers over and conceals the real. It is also one of the most apt means of conveying the artificiality of our time. For me, therefore, color is a critically important and at the same time inescapable tool used in the construction of an inauthentic world. It is an instrument that nourishes my critical perspective. In this context, I believe it would be a shortcoming to consider my color choices in painting independently of this reality.

Hatice Bengisu: In your first series, Linear Patterns, color merges with line to produce movement and vibration; in the Labyrinths series, color evolves into a structure that constructs surface, volume, and space; and in the Itself and Its Shadow series, these two approaches coexist within the same composition. How would you evaluate this transformation in the line–color relationship?

Hayri Esmer: I think of it this way: I see line, across all my works, as part of a formal search, like every other formative element. It is an element that contributes to a new interpretation of form. The transformations in my use of line are therefore aimed at revealing its different realities and its potential for generating form. In my early works, line both created a surface texture that established a characteristic structure of my own and shaped images appropriate to the concept; it was, in other words, a formative element. Naturally, overlapping lines of different colors produced optical vibrations and flickers. In those paintings, line was emphatically at the center. It was almost the principal concern.

In the Labyrinths, by contrast, I wished to foreground the architecture and spatiality of the painting. This architecture constituted the primary structure. Line, this time in conjunction with color, emerged with a poetic quality that dissolved the rigidity and harshness of the architecture. It lent volume to the surface; through the vibrations it created, it intensified the perception of the color's chroma; but its essential function was to build a lyricism arising from its delicate structure. This simultaneously created a contrast with the rigid and coarse character of the architecture and opened that structure to lyricism.

In the Itself and Its Shadow series, the situation differs from the other two. Here, I wanted line to exist on the surface as an element independent of color and form. On close inspection, one can see that the line extends beyond forms, shifts, often rests over them, and does not coincide with them. Line, of course, also generates a shape; but in this series, I wanted it to break clearly away from color and its domain and to stand on the surface as an autonomous element. This was undoubtedly a manifestation of the formal and conceptual search I described. Following this separation, I also produced works in which I continued the formal inquiry solely with line. In one half of the divided Covering/Concealing paintings, there are pure lines, detached from the color surface. I should emphasize that this transformation is not a linear evolution but rather a condition that arises from my formal search, my formal interpretation, and the interrelationships between them.

I regard line and color as structural elements of painting. Naturally, by virtue of their intertwined relations, they possess a certain permeability. I also think of line as a constituent element of the painting, one that becomes, as far as possible, independent of the other elements. For this reason, even before I begin to draw, I start with the question: "What should the color of the line be?" And every line I use inherently possesses a color. From this standpoint, I begin with whatever color the overall unity of the painting demands. Moreover, the character of the form that color and line will produce is determined by the concept or the structure and needs of the painting. If, therefore, we think of painting and artistic language as a composite that gathers many elements within it, meaning too must be understood as an output of this composite. In this sense, as you also suggest, it would be right not to consider the line–color relationship independently of the search for meaning. Viewed within this framework, one can see that both elements are inseparable supports of my search for poetic expression in painting.

Hatice Bengisu : Given this transformation of line and color, is it possible to say that this plastic language constitutes not merely a formal structure but a process of becoming that operates through the sensory and encounter-based relations established on the surface? In this context, how would you define the surface as an ontological field where time is layered and meaning emerges?

Hayri Esmer: Of course… For me, the surface is a space where I develop ways of engaging with the field, where relations are created, where encounters become possible; and therefore, a space of existence. We might also call it a place where a game without borders or rules is brought into being. In this context, layering holds a privileged significance for me. The surface is itself already a layer… by filling what lies behind it, I embark on a journey through time. An imaginary journey. This journey, unfolding within the flat structure of the surface and the deep temporality of the layers, undoubtedly enriches our world of meaning, drawing us away from the surface and granting us depth.

Hatice Bengisu: Do the color layers, transitions, and repetitions in your canvas paintings make visible a nonlinear, fragmented, and plural experience of time? In this context, what kind of relationship can be established between formal structure and temporality?

Hayri Esmer: Certainly… Concepts such as layering, repetition, symbolic elements, shifts, transitions, and interruption can be seen as elements that render this nonlinear perspective visible. As elements focused on relating the plural, their coexistence constructs, through each element's relation to what lies beyond itself, to the other, a temporality that is both multiple and simultaneously discontinuous. I believe that viewing this multiple temporality from the present and formalizing it within a new context reveals a multifaceted relationship. For me, how these differences are brought into relation through formal structure undoubtedly gains importance. The graphic composition of the painting therefore discloses the nature of this relationship.

Undoubtedly, in my work, context finds its direction through the language of geometry. Although this choice of language may seem to partly smooth over multiplicity, it leads to a surprising outcome and enables me to establish a playful relationship with the viewer.

Nevertheless, it is a priority for me that all references and allusions in my works belong to the sociology of the present. For this reason, along with the concepts mentioned above, I believe that the elements I reference, including the structure of the painting, belong to specific conditions and moments, and I proceed with this assumption. I do not believe anything can be thought of independently of time. Therefore, every emotion, feeling, and concept that arises from the experience of my works defines the present of which I, too, am a part.

Hatice Bengisu: In your works produced between 1998 and 2006, the line appears as an element that generates discontinuity through a dense, scribble-like, fragmented, and seemingly chaotic visual structure. In your works after 2006, however, the line assumes a markedly different role—one that establishes order and operates in a more organised, controlled, structural, and spatial manner. How would you interpret this evolution of the line within the context of your artistic and intellectual practice?

Hayri Esmer: Yes, I believe that is an accurate observation. Looking back, this transformation emerged through the choices I made among the possibilities I encountered over time, relying on those experiences I knew genuinely belonged to me. I do not see it as the result of a strategic or carefully planned decision. Rather, it was the outcome of an inner urge to search for what was truly my own—or perhaps of a process of confronting myself. Instead of remaining within the same style or visual language, I chose to move forward by listening to the new experiences generated through each new encounter. Seen from this perspective, I believe this transformation was significant in many respects.

In this sense, the Windows series should be regarded as a decisive turning point in my artistic practice. Before Windows, the line functioned primarily as an element that gave form to objects. Immediately afterwards, however, in the Sequential Patterns series, the line emerged as an autonomous presence in its own right. It seemingly relinquished all of its formative functions. Instead, it acquired a new mode of existence simply through horizontality—or through the tension established between the horizontal and the vertical. What interested me at that point was precisely the opposite of how I had previously employed the line. Rather than allowing it to perform its conventional role of shaping form, I wanted it to exist solely as itself. In these paintings, the line no longer defines, describes, or constructs anything. It exists simply as itself—in its most elemental and primitive condition.

Perhaps I can explain this process more clearly. The earliest of the paintings you refer to date back to 1995. At that time, my work was dominated by an approach in which forms emerged through fluid, elongated lines. The paintings were constructed almost entirely through line—and, of course, through colour. Parallel to the formal and thematic concerns of my printmaking from the same period, these works also moved towards increasingly simplified forms. At times, a painting consisted of only one or two elements suspended within expansive empty spaces. The vibration of the line was extraordinarily intense and animated the entire pictorial field. If one were to momentarily set that vibration aside, what remained would be an almost minimalist painting.

As time passed—or more precisely, as I approached the early 2000s—this visual language gradually evolved into a structure dominated by geometry and sharply defined forms. These forms became abstractions of recognisable objects: knives, bombs, and fragments of the human body. I believe this approach reached a more distilled state in Black Dreams, completed in 2000. Here, the vibration of the line had diminished considerably, while black became the dominant colour occupying the pictorial field.

This transformation was largely determined by the nature of the subject itself. During that period, my research focused on war and violence, while at the same time I was completing my doctoral dissertation in art.

In Elegy for Baghdad (2003), it became possible to discern clear traces of both geometry and an expressionist sensibility. Yet the transformation you refer to—and the one I also consider the most significant turning point in my artistic practice—occurred while I was working on the Windows series.

When I completed Windows, I had the distinct feeling that everything I had encountered up to that point had been laid out before me. It was as though I were sitting at a table, looking at it all, aware that I had to make a choice. In that sense, the series became a crossroads, opening up a number of possible directions for my practice. It contained many of the concerns that had occupied me until then: readily recognisable objects, emptiness, political and symbolic discourse, systemic structures, aesthetic sensibility, a poetic dimension, and many other elements that enabled me to confront my own experiences.

I remember that, during this period, I was increasingly drawn—almost intuitively—towards greater clarity and reduction; in other words, towards a more minimalist sensibility. The series was already shaped by a conception of form with increasingly defined boundaries. What was emerging was a visual language that felt more direct, more deliberate, and more resolved. Standing at that crossroads, I chose to continue with those elements that resonated with me most deeply: formal clarity, poeticity, and the line. Although the line had always been present in my work, it underwent a decisive transformation at this point. The understanding of the line that informed this shift was something I had borrowed from my experience in advertising rather than from art itself. Once relocated within my artistic practice, it assumed an entirely different function. The Sequential Patterns series is founded precisely on these decisions.

Looking back today, I realise that many of the things I believed I had left behind on that metaphorical table never truly disappeared. They continued to resurface, in one form or another, throughout later stages of my practice, proving that they were never elements that could simply be abandoned.

Hatice Bengisu: In your paintings, prints, and installations, layering, one of the three fundamental elements grounding the formal structure, frequently appears not as a unifying element but as a tense and fragmented structure. How do you approach layering in your own artistic practice? Do you regard it as a tool that makes time and memory visible, or as a stance against the fixation of meaning?

Hayri Esmer: My perspective encompasses both, but what is more valuable to me is an unstable world of meaning… fluid, permeable, carrying uncertainties, and above all, the density and multiplicity of layers hold my interest. We generally think of layering as a quality that refers to the connected states of structures which, by their nature, accumulate over time and relate to what preceded them. In addition, I believe we must also include juxtaposition, different structures existing within the same time frame. Layering, therefore, should encompass not only experiences carried from the past to the present but also the differences of the present and all the components that enable pluralistic thinking. This, in turn, foregrounds the shifting, mutable character of identity, culture, and memory.

This kind of relationship with cultural structure enables a perspective that opens the door to multiple imaginaries and multiple worlds of meaning. Layering is undoubtedly, in this sense, one of the most important elements both for understanding and for reconstructing today's multicultural fabric. This is why it holds a privileged place for me, and why it has been a recurring element in many of my works since the 1990s, in varying forms. Every element that constitutes a painting is, within its own web of relations, a layer and an "other" for me. Initially I used it as interwoven, overlapping lines; later as overlapping and interpenetrating planes of color, especially in the Windows series. In subsequent years, I can say I employed it through fragmented forms, overlapping screen images, and the deliberate concealment of images to render them invisible. I therefore make use of its plural and fragmented dimensions: layers that pile up, that cover, conceal, or reveal one another, that seep into one another. Any formal formation capable of serving as a source of multiple meanings is, for me, an indispensable tool. While this fragmented structure and its multiple temporalities may not be fully legible within a single series, they become much more apparent when all the works are considered together. My choices of material, language, composition, and method, along with my lived experiences, can be seen, in connection with public memory, as a conduit through which this multiplicity and layering of meaning emerge.

Hatice Bengisu: Considering that the limitless nature of the oppositions accompanying the dialectical cycle in the world of being brings subjectivity to light, can we think of your works, constructed on this basis, as aesthetic reflections of thought?

Hayri Esmer: Of course… Is not art, after all, a field that renders the formal expressions of our life experiences enduring? In my view, art is the act of making our existence visible. I see every aesthetic endeavor as an effort to make our relationships and experiences more visible. For this reason, I experience many dimensions of the society and time in which I live and accumulate data. From this data, I select those things that attract my attention, that I find characteristic, that fall within my scope, and that I believe may also be meaningful for others. I then relate and transform these experiences into images from my own perspective, making them my own and keeping them open to the generation of meaning. I am, without question, engaged in the act of forming.

The character of form as an organism, its conditions of existence, its structure, and its plane of meaning constitute my fundamental concerns. Most importantly, through these I pursue as-yet-undefined experiences and new relations, and therefore new meanings, and live out this adventure.

I am not a philosopher, but I consider myself a good observer. I believe I possess an imagistic mode of thinking and that I proceed by accumulating, categorizing, comparing, and relating my observations and experiences, regarding all their possible details as determining factors. This is, in truth, a way of existing. It may be difficult to accept, but I do not believe it is possible to move forward while ignoring data. Every artistic existence consists, in one form or another, of a classification and correlation of data. For me, art is a structural analysis based on this data, an analysis that lays bare the graph of social relations. The analogy between the structure and organizational mode of the society in which we live and the abstract forms in painting makes data significant. For this reason, I regard reasoning through oppositions and conflicts as a way of establishing a more reliable relationship with truth. However, the inclusion of my works in a dialectical cycle is, to my mind, not a contrived stance but something that emerges naturally within the flow of life itself, manifesting of its own accord over time.

When I look back today, I observe qualities that persist across the works. Geometry and lyricism, for instance, something present, in one way or another, from the very beginning to the present in all my works. In the paintings, hard-edged, rigid, broken or breakable forms, or structures that reference architecture and the city, are prominent in the work's construction. On the other hand, the softness created by the hair-thin, fragile line, side by side, overlapping, interwoven, makes contrast a natural part of them. Hardness and softness. Similarly, this structure causes us to perceive calm and tension as intertwined. And again, there is the simultaneous use of symbols that everyone, or at least a given society, agrees upon, alongside an abstract language on which we do not agree… we see that all of these, even if by coincidence, take part in the construction of the painting.

Hatice Bengisu: Within the context of your own practice, how do you conceive of the artwork as a field of knowledge?

Hayri Esmer: The artwork's relationship with knowledge is undoubtedly valuable. I see the knowledge that art produces as implicit, intuitive, and not easily defined, yet, when we encounter it, as an extraordinarily powerful and persuasive form of knowledge with which we can forge a connection. It is not descriptive but a knowledge that makes us feel and sense. It is a form of knowledge that envelops us through all our senses, arises primarily through experience, and therefore does not produce certainty; because it seeps through cracks, it stands in conflict with received assumptions. For this reason, it can only become a living, enduring knowledge when it seeps into the viewer, seizes them, and is completed through their experience. This is precisely why it is a form of knowledge and thinking open to interpretation. In this sense, it may not be pragmatic, but it is a knowledge capable of leaving deep traces in the viewer. It is for exactly this reason that the knowledge most capable of transforming a person is, without doubt, the knowledge of art.

When examined closely, my works can be seen as an attempt to conduct an archaeology of this kind of knowledge using the data of the contemporary world. In my works, I use formal relations not to create an emotive field but to construct a network of structural relations and to introduce a new structural typology to space. In this sense, abstraction, as the language I employ, is the instrument through which I establish these structural relations. In this respect, it presents a diagram of the organizational structure of contemporary society, a graph of our relationships. I believe that the network that forms, the decentered structure, and the relational and contextual formations built through symbolic codes give rise to a field of knowledge that is particular to me.

As a language, abstraction enters into communication with the viewer from a position as far as possible outside the viewer's assumed field of knowledge, without reliance on object-based knowledge. In this sense, it removes boundaries and expands the field. Symbolic codes, for their part, incorporate a given cultural experience. This makes possible a mode of thinking grounded in conflict and opposition, and triggers discontinuity, a condition that supports the viewer's independent, unprejudiced stance, one that holds contradiction within itself. Senses, intuitions, and feelings come to the fore; their neutrality, immediacy, and reliability ground this relationship on a solid foundation. Here, knowledge is not something given but a polycentric construction that emerges as a result of this new condition, a feeling that can vary according to the senses, a knowledge that pluralizes. From this vantage point, I believe that knowledge is not stable, that it exists through experience and is constantly changing, and that it is vital precisely because it exists in this way.

Hatice Bengisu: What direction do you foresee for your artistic practice in the future? In which conceptual and formal areas do you aim to advance, and on which aesthetic questions do you plan to work?

Hayri Esmer: Certain projections can of course be made, but it is difficult to predict with precision. Even without a full definition or forecast, drawing certain boundaries is always possible. For instance, I would like to give greater weight to material-based works. I enjoy using the possibilities that materials offer. I am also drawn to "construction," "articulation," "disrupting the structure," and the encounter of the different with the relationships that emerge from it. Although I do not approach this from a strictly technical standpoint, I have not made prints for a long time. I miss it. When conditions allow, I am thinking about experimental printmaking.

From a conceptual standpoint, viewed critically, I see that "destruction," "deterioration," "decay," and the "dysfunctional" are striking concepts capable of defining our era. For this reason, continuing to reflect on the discrediting of the system and its operations, and producing works on this theme, is among my near-term intentions.

The vulnerabilities and malfunction potential of the system are things I engage with keenly. Despite all our advanced technological means, I observe a profound severance from our own nature and the emergence of a new, internalized structure, a new "normal," that sidelines the human being. In my view, this manifests as a form of deterioration fed by selfishness, the individual's weakest yet most indispensable trait, and as a tendency to look backward rather than forward. We face an environment in which the human being is no longer at the center and the system sustains itself by generating crises within. This corresponds to a structural shift in human history. As a consequence, there is a new conception of life built on the satisfaction of instincts… I therefore find it compelling to think around questions such as: might an "architecture of decay," a problematic, malfunctioning structure, be possible?

Hatice Bengisu: Thank you, Hayri Esmer.

 

This interview was conducted on January 20, 2026, at the artist's studio in Eskişehir.