Kemal Önsoy, 1954

Having continued his studies in New York after completing his art education in 1980, Kemal Önsoy returned to Istanbul in 1993. He treats his paintings like an archaeologist examining the structural ruins of history by focusing on layers. The artist’s practice depends on lengthy physical processes where he merges temporal and structural transitivity on a single pictorial plane. In his paintings, stacked layers of different colored paints collapse on a single surface to create a new array. His images recall figures, and at times they feel like abstract landscapes, at others they disappear into places conjured by layers of colors. Each layer carries its own meaning in Önsoy’s works, coming together to suggest narrative, historical, architectural, and corporal deposits and imprints.

In his paintings rooted in history, literature, poetry, and theatre, Önsoy creates marks traceable between the accumulation of paint and the layers. In “No:5,” it is possible to experience the cultural components that the artist layers on his canvases with an archaeological approach, under the impact of a more intense color palette.