02/05/2026
Installation views of Erol Eskici’s exhibition “Fields of Encounter”
The paintings of Erol Eskici move between figuration and atmospheric displacement—a conceptual space that reconsiders questions of reality and appearance.
For Plato, the distinction between appearance and truth is fundamental: what we see with our eyes is only the visible world, and this world is not the true reality. Behind it lies something eternal and perfect, which Plato calls the Ideas. These Ideas are not physical things and can only be grasped through thought. Truth, for Plato, is therefore never found in what is seen, but in something invisible that lies behind the world of appearances.
Magical realism in painting subtly shifts this order. In the tradition of the Neue Sachlichkeit or in the works of artists such as Frida Kahlo and Giorgio de Chirico, we encounter visual worlds that remain realistic on the surface while simultaneously producing a subtle sense of disturbance. In this atmospheric density, we seem to remember a realm behind the world. The depicted world is rendered with a precision that creates an uncanny effect, as if reality is slightly displaced, condensed, or removed from ordinary time. The “magical” element here is not a break with reality, but a deepening of its appearance.
Here Eskici’s painting can also be situated. His works preserve the recognizability of figures, spaces, and objects, while resisting a purely narrative or documentary reading. The forms appear structured according to internal laws, almost musical in their rhythm and proportion, yet this sense of order simultaneously unsettles physical logic itself, which appears subtly suspended. The world remains visible, yet never exhausted by what it shows.
From this perspective, Plato and magical realism converge indirectly around a shared question that Eskici’s painting continues to explore: where does the truth of the visible reside—outside the world, behind it? Or within its quiet, irreducible presence itself?
The exhibition “Fields of Encounter” with paintings by Erol Eskici is on view through May 30 at GOLESTANI Gallery in Düsseldorf, in collaboration with SANATORIUM, Istanbul.
Photos: Naima Selck
