Self-portait

Ergin İnan graduated from the İstanbul Faculty of Law in 1963 and studied at the State School of Applied Fine Arts from 1964-1968. Ergin İnan’s works are reflections of the artist’s visual memory which take the form of bodies that are as fluid as water and leave in their wake the flavor of a fleeting image; of overlapping, compound-perspective faces and eyes that point to different spiritual states; of a love of nature that transforms the mystery of the microcosm into a visual atlas; of the plastic structure of books of astrological and oracular pronouncements, charms, seals, and calligraphy; of occult powers that are attributed to appendages such as hands and feet. His art is naturally nourished by a visual and intellectual energy radiated by cultures joined together like the links of a chain. An artist whose works are suffused with the atmosphere of the East, Ergin İnan takes an interest in the mystic rituals of Central Asia while perambulating within the boundaries of the West’s language of rational and critical form. He juxtaposes the notions of love, light, body, and faith in Mevlana’s Mesnevi with the efforts of an existentialist to understand and give meaning to the world. Another intellectual foray that informs his pictorial language is concerned with the universally interesting human theories about creation. This is a point of view which is respectful of the multipartite course and identity of history and which exposes both body and thought to the cultural and intellectual values of an existential world. This is why the human body, which provides the backbone of Ergin İnan’s art, is a signpost pointing to the human relationship with the infinity that lies at the core of all.