The Room No:153 Painting

Artist Statement – Erna Ucar Erna Ucar was born in Ankara in 1979 and graduated from the Graphic Design Department, Faculty of Fine Arts, Hacettepe University in 2001. Her background in graphic design underpins her painterly approach, where bold form meets tactile depth. After years living across Cyprus, Turkey, Russia, Malaysia, and Luxembourg, she recognized the paradox of modern urban life: shared routines—coffee, apartments, screens—breed both connection and isolation. The Room Series emerged from these observations, mapping the emotional geography of crowds in compact settings. Ucar’s surfaces are layered with raw canvas, acrylic, graphite, and sand, blending bright, Fauvist-inflected hues with pastel softness. The textured, relief-like fields invite close looking, revealing new figures and moods over time. Her process is prolonged and meticulous: figures are positioned with a front–back depth ambiguity, creating works that feel simultaneously like large-scale graphic posters and intimate paintings. The resulting compositions pulse with emotional resonance—joy, solitude, resilience, estrangement all coexist. What anchors her practice is the search for universality within individuality. Each work reflects how people, despite cultural differences, share emotional rhythms and silent moods. By layering vibrant color with raw materiality, Ucar transforms ordinary routines into psychological landscapes—windows into the shared solitude of contemporary existence. Through these layered textures and vivid surfaces, Ucar gives visible form to the subtle emotional states of modern life—a universal reflection rendered in color, contrast, and materiality.