We talked with Artnivo artist Özer Toraman about his art and his future plans.
Focusing on gender, identity, sexuality and the body, the artist blurs and separates his models in his paintings, thus softening the boundaries, in order to emphasize that gender identity distinctions should not be sharp. Starting out with the main shapings determined by the society, Toraman expresses the distinctions that put pressure on the individual in his own language in his paintings.
Emphasizing how we make sense of and separate the categories of men and women, Toraman says that this distinction cannot be separated with such sharp lines. Just like our identity cards, he emphasizes gender categorization with baby blue and pale pink tones that symbolize men and women in his paintings. By combining portraits of men and women, he creates androgynous portraits whose sexual identity we cannot read, and shows these portraits to us perfectly; In this sense, it glorifies sexual anonymity. We met with Özer Toraman in his atelier…