In the heart of Urla, continuing its cultural and artistic activities with the vision of enhancing the values that art and culture bring to our lives and making them more accessible, Urladam Art Center presented, on August 7, a very special exhibition of works by one of the great masters of Turkish painting, academician/painter Devrim Erbil, curated by art writer İbrahim Karaoğlu.
In the manifesto he presented for this exhibition, curator İbrahim Karaoğlu states:
“Merleau-Ponty says, ‘Existence is spatial,’ and how right he is. ‘Not only the human body, but also emotions and thoughts are bound and dependent on space. Existence is spatial not only in its material aspect, but also in its spiritual aspect.’ And a person, within a space that affects them, integrates with the soul of that space.
For Devrim Erbil, this has been the case as well.
The greatest knot in his destiny is Istanbul. The images of that knot awaken, nurture, and enrich his inner artistic creative power. In his paintings, everything takes shape with Istanbul. With poetic abstractions, he charts an atlas of the ancient city.
Just as a poet, bound to his fate, like Konstantinos Kavafis—son of Istanbul-born Pedros Kavafis—who could find no sea other than the sea of the city that would not let him go, and who soothed his melancholy by refining and sharpening his soul, Erbil too consoles Istanbul in his paintings. He touches the city’s dreams, its visage, its destiny. The thousand faces, the thousand postures of Istanbul pass through his works in poetic abstraction. And since ‘Istanbul became Istanbul,’ no painter has so clothed it in its own poetry in his paintings.
With a style that creates an extraordinary, surprising, and different perception and sensation, Erbil transforms each painting into a masterpiece. The exhibition at Urladam presents a special selection of works reserved for his own museum, as well as original print works available to art lovers.
With colors and lines, he creates rhythmic, poetic, symphonic, and magical works that offer the viewer a visual feast—a warm greeting from a pioneering master at the peak of his art to Urla.”
Before the exhibition opening on August 7, at 7:00 PM in the Urladam Metin Erksan Hall, the documentary Istanbul Mon Amur, prepared by filmmaker/writer Durmuş Akbulut for the great master Devrim Erbil, was screened. The event, attended by a large number of artists and art lovers, was presented by cinema/theatre actress Nazan Kesal, who also held an on-stage conversation with the master artist about art and colors.
In the second part of the talk, moderated by curator İbrahim Karaoğlu, guests at the event asked the artist questions they were curious about. Congratulating Devrim Erbil, Mayor of Urla Selçuk Balkan also asked the artist to create a painting of Urla.
One of the most colorist artists in our country, the renowned Devrim Erbil, after the documentary screening and discussion, moved to the exhibition hall with the audience and continued to converse with admirers in front of his color-filled paintings.
Describing the artist’s colorist qualities, curator Karaoğlu says:
“In Devrim Erbil’s painting, color is not merely an element that appeals to the eye; it is the silent word of meaning, emotion, and thought. It shapes form, gives voice to the soul; it is the echo of his inner world. His blue is tranquility—peace resting on the horizon. His red is an exuberance beyond will and judgment. Black is the veil of deep mystery, the dark window of the unknown. White is the purest state of being—a dream, a silence.
With his colors, he does more than create form—he conveys rhythm, multiplies movement, magnifies light. Each contrast is an inner dance of emotion.
In his art, color is not ornamentation but a language, an attitude, a way of seeing. It is an aura—an invisible halo enveloping the viewer. And this language of color is the painted form of his sensitivity to life, to people, and to form itself.”
Karaoğlu invites art lovers passing through Urla to this special celebration of art, which will conclude on the evening of August 10.