Serkan Sarier – Reformatting Archetype, 2022

An elongated neck, a face rendered in silhouette, eyes that appear both vacant and strikingly vivid. Serkan Sarier’s work Reformatting Archetype depicts a figure that seems both familiar and alien at the same time. Against a warm, almost glowing palette of ochre, gold and dark shadows, a head emerges whose physiognomic features are deliberately shifted and exaggerated.

The title refers to the ‘re-formatting’ of an archetype, a primal image of human representation. Sarier deconstructs classical notions of portraiture and reassembles them. Proportions are thrown out of balance, the eyes appear mask-like and exaggerated, and the face cannot be unambiguously interpreted as an individual portrait.

What is striking here is the tension between realism and alienation. Individual features such as the ear and nose appear almost naturalistically modelled, whilst oversized lips and shifted proportions break this sense of realism. At first glance, the distortions are reminiscent of digital image manipulations, such as those found in filters or image-editing programmes. Yet Sarier does not simply transfer this principle into painting. Instead, he seems to alter the human face according to his own criteria.

The perception from a distance is also interesting: up close, painterly transitions, spray marks and textures become visible, whilst from a few steps away the figure appears surprisingly cohesive and more realistic. The ear, nose and neck in particular then stand out more vividly, lending the figure an almost physical presence.