In this exhibition, I want to encourage introspection and contemplation to the viewer through art. Our inner worlds are complex and diverse, and with visual representation one can develop empathy and a sense of understanding of these worlds, we can embrace the complexity, and beauty, of the human mind.
Özer Toraman ( b.1989 ) is a painter living between Istanbul and Berlin. He is known for his unique approach to landscape and portraiture, which sits between the figurative and the imaginary. Using photographs that he has taken while travelling the world as inspiration, Toraman creates works that are ‘windows’ to another realm. The artist’s signature use of flat colour planes, combined with meticulously detailed features, shuns fixed meaning and invites viewers to impart personal significance onto each scene.
The Ocean in my Heart invites viewers into a world where imagined landscapes blend with reality.
Inspired by photographs taken in different countries around the world, Toraman’s paintings combine the imagined with the figurative, creating what the artist considers to be windows to another realm. Strolling figures and idyllic beach scenes become surreal in their isolation, while languid grassy picnics and intimate portraits become untethered to the limits of reality.
Through his focus on beach and sea-side scenes, Toraman’s recent series draws on both his own travels and connection with the ocean, as well as the geography of Singapore itself. His palette is particularly fitting in that he opts for pastel hues as an instinctive link to his own childhood memories, with blue being particularly dominant across his works. For Toraman, blue allows him to “dream without limits,” and further positions these vignettes as windows or glimpses into a dreamscape.
The Ocean in my Heart is on view from 19 January to 22 March 2024.
