“A lot of my work stems from this idea of what I call being stuck
in between,” says multidisciplinary Elk Grove artist Taner Pasamehmetoglu.
“My parents both immigrated here from Turkey, and largely for me
and my sister to have the opportunity to pursue whatever we
wanted, and so growing up that was always very prevalent to me.
Feeling that almost burden of privilege to be an American and do
all these great things has always kind of stuck with me. So I’m
always stuck in between pursuing what that is and just being
content with being an artist and exploring my creativity and not
feeding this capitalist machine that often is what it means to
have an American dream,” Pasamehmetoglu explains.
“The American Dream” is a reflection of the artist’s feeling of
being stuck between two worlds as a second-generation American
and artist pursuing his dreams amid a capitalist society. (Photo
courtesy of Taner Pasamehmetoglu)
His painting, “The American Dream,” is a reflection of that
stuckness, though it may not be readily apparent to viewers who
see a scene of action: a man in an orange safety vest pushing a
row of shopping carts across a parking lot scattered with
icebergs. Atop the carts, a battle-ready George Washington
captains a crew of rowing soldiers waving an American flag; the
painting is part homage, part parody of a 19th-century painting,
“Washington Crossing the Delaware”, by German-American artist
Emanuel Leutze.
“It’s not entirely this critique of America either,”
Pasamehmetoglu says, “because in a way, it’s because of America,
it’s because of that freedom of speech, that I’m able to paint
something absurd like this and have open conversations about this
with people, and it’s not blasphemous in any way.”
A recent artist in residence with the
City of Sacramento’s Office of Climate Action &
Sustainability, Pasamehmetoglu’s art explores
important topics through a sometimes surreal lens. With a bold,
vivid style that straddles the line between surrealism and
abstract expressionism, his large, colorful works are complex,
layered and full of surprises.
His 48-by-36-inch painting “Erosion” depicts an almost
apocalyptic view of Yosemite National Park’s iconic granite
landmarks looming over a valley filled with advertisements and
roadside signs for fast food chains, gas stations, hotels and big
box stores.
“Erosion” depicts an almost apocalyptic view of Yosemite National
Park’s iconic granite landmarks looming over a valley filled with
advertisements and roadside signs for fast food chains, gas
stations, hotels and big box stores. (Photo courtesy of Taner
Pasamehmetoglu)
Other works, like “Three Little Birds,” are more abstract. This
39-inch square painting, a thrift store find turned environmental
experiment, includes layer upon layer of paint, much of which has
been peeled from the surface and reapplied in small blocks of
greens, blues, oranges, pinks and neon yellows. Beneath these
layered “pixels,” as the artist calls them, are the ghostly
impressions of the original imagery — the result of months of
exposure to the elements and the artist’s exploration of
materials and the environment.
For Pasamehmetoglu, the painting captures his feelings about
climate change and how “we lose the things we love,” but it also
carries a message of hope and “rebuilding what has been
destroyed.”
“Three Little Birds” is a multi-layered piece that explores
climate change through manipulation of the materials by the
artist and the environment. (Photo courtesy of Taner
Pasamehmetoglu)
Pasamehmetoglu, who moved to the area from Salt Lake City in
2020, works in marketing by day and has a degree in strategic
communications from the University of Utah. Despite a background
in photojournalism and photography, Pasamehmetoglu doesn’t limit
himself to representational work, or even just one style, medium,
or genre of art. Collaboration is a common thread in his work,
from sharing a canvas with his wife to
inviting the public to paint
alongside him at outdoor events like Midtown’s Second
Saturday.
Talk about sustainability in your art and why that’s
important to you.
So sustainability has always kind of been something that’s
important to me. My dad is a nuclear engineer, and he’s dedicated
his life to finding an alternative energy source, a viable energy
source. And so growing up raised by my dad specifically, it was
always just kind of embedded in us. Sustainability is important.
…
I always kind of grew up knowing that things are finite, they’re
not abundant, and this doesn’t just go for the environment. This
goes for everything. And so I try to incorporate that in my
practice too. So I try to upcycle and reuse and minimize my
footprint as much as I can in my own process. …
I’ll go get paints from the recycling and reuse center in
Sacramento where they give them out for free. Contractors will
just drop them off if they have abundance of paint they didn’t
use, and it might end up in the landfill otherwise.
I’ll use upcycled canvas, I’ll reuse paintings of mine, even if
they’re damaged or whatever. I think that actually adds to the
painting rather than reduces its value or whatever. So I’m always
just trying to — even if the subject matter of my work isn’t
about sustainability, I want that concept in all of my pieces by
my own process and by my own kind of attitude about our resources
and how finite they are.
Pasamehmetoglu creates in his home studio in Elk Grove. (Photo by
Marie-Elena Schembri)
It doesn’t have to be this confusing, polarizing thing. Really at
the heart of it, what it is about is just ensuring that we all
can live comfortably and happily and give that to future
generations too. That’s what this is all about, and I think we
can all agree that that’s something we want. And so if we can
create work, if I can create work that helps keep that
conversation going, that dialogue going, pique that curiosity for
people, those kids that come visit my booth, if we can start a
little conversation about sustainability too, that’s awesome. And
that’s all I want to have my work be about too.
Tell me about your piece “Erosion.” What was the catalyst
for you to create that painting?
So we visited Yosemite and I was just in awe of it. I had never
been to a national park that beautiful. Obviously all of our
national parks are wonderful, but Yosemite, there’s something
really special about it. It is so well preserved, and it’s so
beautiful, and I think driving in to Yosemite, you notice the
stark difference once you enter the park where there’s no
restaurants, there’s no gas stations, there’s no nothing. And so
that border where you kind of leave capitalism and enter this
natural beauty is just very stark to me. And so entering the park
the last time we visited, that’s where the idea struck me. What
would it look like if we actually kind of just let developers run
rampant? And then it became a kind of fun exercise for me and
okay, well, let me just imagine that world, and it’s a doom and
gloom. It’s a doomy and gloomy type of imagination thing. …
I really wanted it to feel realistic. I didn’t want it to just
feel like this thing that could never exist, because it could
exist. That’s the sad reality of it too. And that was also part
of the impetus of the piece is my family’s Turkish, and when I
hear stories from my family back home about beautiful places that
exist in Turkey, like Yosemite, they might not be as grandiose
and as beautiful as Yosemite, but they are way more
historic.
You’re talking about the center of civilization. Some of these
places, they’re thousands, thousands of years of history in these
places that they are literally putting parking lots and shopping
malls over now. And it crushes my family. It crushes the people
of Turkey, and I just think that’s a reality for some
people.
This piece that I’m creating here is a reality for people in
Turkey. It’s a reality for people in Brazil in the rainforest
that, obviously it’s happening there too, where we’re demolishing
our rainforest and these beautiful ecosystems. It’s happening
around the world, and we can’t just be naive to the fact that it
might not happen here. So that piece was really just like, ‘Okay,
this is what it could look like. What are we going to do to make
sure it never does?’ So that was kind of the impetus for it.
How do you think your residency with the City of
Sacramento Office of Climate Action & Sustainability has
influenced your creative practice?
I think one thing that I think it did for me is gave me a lot of
confidence in my art practice and allowed me to talk about art in
a way that wasn’t just so personal and that wasn’t just so about
me, but that art is such a universal tool and medium and thing
that we all experience and all can benefit from. …
The experience we all had was like, ‘Everybody just thinks we’re
muralists and we’re all just going to paint pretty pictures on
walls.’ And it’s like half the job was showing that that is not
the case at all. There is so much more to art beyond that, and
you can leverage art for so many different things.
With a bold, vivid style that straddles the line between
surrealism and abstract expressionism, his large, colorful works
are complex, layered and full of surprises. (Photo by Marie-Elena
Schembri)
I worked with Matt Eierman, who’s the director of public works,
on a presentation that he gave to city council during the budget
audits. … You would think in that setting that art doesn’t belong
at all, and in fact, we were able to create some really cool,
meaningful, memorable visuals that help demonstrate some of this
data in a way that city council, again, it would be more
memorable for them than just graphs and statistics. And that’s
just one example of countless ways that I was able to integrate
art, integrate creativity in a setting that just almost kind of
never considers it. So it gave me the confidence again, that what
I’m doing is important. It is helpful, it is universal. …
I think that’s a necessary thing. … Especially in this democratic
society, if we want things that represent all of us, it has to
include all of us. And so us being artists is part of that, us
being creatives, us visual learners, us people who are
neurodivergent. I just think there’s so many different things
that our structures don’t consider, and art is a really powerful
way to break those walls down. And I got to experience that
firsthand.
Why do you feel drawn to collaborative artwork?
I think painting is such an interesting medium in that in every
other art, every other art form, especially in music and dance,
collaboration is very key to it. You go see bands, you go see
ballet performances, you go see all these wonderful performances
that are collaborative. And yet with painting, we always just
kind of assume that painters are these people that are locked in
their basement just coming up with weird ideas on their own, and
they’re completely isolated. And I hate that. I hate that. That
kind of seems pretty prevalent in painting. And so any way that
you can invite others to lend different experience, different
perspective, especially in the abstract form where it’s all very
interpretive and it’s all very based on your own experience, if
you have more people in the room, you’re going to create
something more interesting in the net because it’s more than just
yourself. And it should always be about more than just one person
to me. …
Collaborative painting “Make Your Mark,” which Pasamehmetoglu
created during his residency with the City of Sacramento Office
of Climate Action and Sustainability, involved the participation
of over 100 people. (Photo courtesy of Taner Pasamehmetoglu)
Because in every other aspect of society, it requires
collaboration. Again, I just came from a government residency.
It’s all about ‘How do we all work together?’ It’s all about,
‘How do we represent our constituents?’ And that’s tough, because
a lot of us have very different ideas about how our city should
be run and about what art should look like, but it doesn’t mean
that one is better than the other. It just means you have to
reach something that not necessarily appeases everyone, but where
you’re learning from one another and you’re taking that into your
own thing.
I think when you can work with other people, you have better
ideas, you have better perspective, especially in Sacramento
where things are so culturally diverse. I love learning about
other artists and their pieces that are maybe very, very close to
their culture, and it’s not something I’m ever going to recreate,
but it gives me better perspective on who they are and what art
is to them, and something to be mindful of as I pursue my own
art. I think even just that, even just experiencing other
people’s art makes you a better artist too. And I think that’s
also part of collaboration.
How does your personal philosophy influence your artistic
style?
I think personal philosophy is like, things are iterative always,
right? And so in my work, I’ve talked about this before, again,
just getting back to that, I treat art as, it’s like a ritual.
Art is a ritual, and it’s not about creating something. It’s not
about the end result. It’s about the process. And I know that’s
cheesy, but that is what art is for me. It’s a documentation of
just what I’m experiencing through life. And those layers, they
speak to depth, they speak to — some days I’m miserable. Some
days work is hard.
We’ve recently been grieving a cat that we lost almost a year ago
now, and that’s been really hard for us. And when I’m grieving, I
paint a lot, and I’m not painting the cat necessarily, or I’m not
painting whatever I’m grieving. In fact, you might think I’m
always a positive, upbeat person. I use a lot of color in my
work, but that color is a way of just taking those emotions and
letting them exist and having them exist. And then I might cover
‘em because I’m going to get over that.
I know that as I keep moving forward, I’m going to have some good
days ahead. And then those are going to be layers that will add
to the painting, and eventually you create something that is
complex. It’s diverse, it’s got a lot of range. And I’m not
saying my work is this grandiose thing in that way, but that’s
the purpose of it for me. I don’t know what’s going to happen
with it most of the time, but I know that it’ll be a
representation of all these things because I’m just adding more
and more to it. …
And my philosophy is just to keep moving forward and just, even
if it’s small, little steps, you just keep moving and eventually
all these little things you do will create something kind of
large that you can look back on and say, “Oh, okay, I’m noticing
some themes now.”
You talk about the idea of time and the progression of
time in your art. Explain that.
I think in a lot of my pieces, you see it in the layers and the
textures. And a lot of the times when I do do that layer and kind
of texture style, I like having pieces of the previous layer peek
through and just, over and over and over, having these little
things peek through. It creates these really, really cool
contrasts in color, in texture that you might not otherwise
discover or might not otherwise think of, and frankly, don’t
subscribe to traditional color theory teachings.
“Home 2.0” is a large collaborative piece Pasamehmetoglu created
with his wife after relocating to Sacramento from Salt Lake City,
incorporating spray paint, oil and acrylic. (Photo courtesy of
Taner Pasamehmetoglu)
A lot of my favorite color combinations are really, really bright
pastels and even neon pinks with army and earthy and grungy
greens. I don’t know why, but it just appeals to me and stuff
like that comes through in work, where that bright pink might
represent a really happy day and that grungy green might
represent a dull day or whatever, vice versa even. But that comes
through in those pieces organically, and it’s not preconceived.
And I think that’s a good reflection of time, right? …
If you look at your life in the span of years, in the span of
weeks, any increment of time, we’re all such complex beings that
you’re never going to have one year where you’re entirely happy
every day or you’re entirely satisfied with everything every day.
We’re constantly changing. We’re constantly evolving. We’re
constantly flawed, we’re constantly nuanced, and that’s what I
want to capture in my work. And you can do that through color,
you can do that through texture. You can do that through
different things. Yeah, I think that’s where the physical meets
the conceptual, is what I’m trying to get to at least.
What are you working on or excited about right
now?
We’re doing a dedication for “Make Your Mark,” which is the
community piece I created for my residency. Over 100 people
contributed to this piece called “Make Your Mark.” And yeah, I’m
really, really, really just honored that we’re displaying it at
Hagginwood Community Center.
And again, it was one of those pieces that we were trying to
take, we took data about extreme heat days in Sacramento. We
wanted to kind of enlighten people on this issue and show people
what you could do. And so each of the cool colors that were
available to use on the painting represented a heat-mitigating or
emission-reducing tactic. And the surface started in extreme heat
colors — oranges and reds and yellows. …
It became a really cool piece. I’m really excited that we got a
lot of engagement with it. A lot of people had conversations with
me and my team about not only art, but the heat crisis here in
Sacramento that we’re facing, and yeah, so
Hagginwood Community
Center, we’re going to display it there. That is
happening on September 13th at 3:30 p.m. So yeah, I’m excited
about that.
Edited for length and clarity.
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