Vahap Avşar, 1965

Vahap Avşar was born in 1965 in Malatya. Between 1985 and 1989, he studied at Dokuz Eylül University’s Faculty of Fine Arts in Izmir. Here, he worked as an assistant in the sculpture studio of Cengiz Çekil, one of the prominent conceptual artists of Turkey. He lives and works in New York. Employing various disciplines, Vahap Avşar’s works are clearly influenced by conceptual art. The artist’s occasionally minimalist and shocking style conceals a critique of power relations, mechanisms of political repression, as well as socially violence and conflict.

Vahap Avşar’s series “Black Album” consists of 12 works. Avşar produced the series by applying metallic silver paint on tar felt using a special technique he developed himself. The artist frequently employs asphalt as a material that he also charges with certain political connotations. The moment the paint touches the asphalt, it freezes into shapes that impart to the veiwer both feelings of fluidity and frozennes. Avşar bases his work precisely on the coincidental and unpredictable nature of this moment of “freezing”, both in the physical and figurative sense. We must not neglect, however, to read “Black Album” as a product of the residue that the artist has distilled from his conceptualization and production processes in previous works.