Emre Yusufi (b. 1981, Istanbul) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice brings together classical sculpture, contemporary visual culture and advanced digital fabrication.
Trained in graphic design at Marmara University Fine Arts Faculty, with studies at Academia Italiana in Florence and a master's degree in visual communication design from Yeditepe University, Yusufi approaches sculpture with both the anatomical discipline of the classical tradition and the visual instinct of a contemporary image-maker.
Over the past decade he has developed an immediately recognisable body of work that places one of antiquity's most enduring figures — Hercules — firmly within the language, objects, humour and contradictions of contemporary life.
Hercules is not employed simply as a quotation from mythology. He has become a recurring protagonist: an archetype through whom ideas of strength, ambition, endurance, vulnerability, pleasure and human endeavour can be reconsidered for a contemporary audience. Across different scales, materials and settings, the work remains unmistakably Yusufi.
During the past ten years, more than one hundred sculptures have been acquired by collectors. Works are now held across Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Australia and Mexico, alongside multi-work private commissions and gallery presentations in London, Paris, Rome, New York, Miami and Dubai.
Before sculpture, Yusufi spent years in creative direction and packaging design for global brands — a background that still informs the clarity and immediacy of his sculptural image.
