The below text is part of a series of monographic responses to the works of the late artist Cengiz Çekil (1945–2015). For this series, we invited artists and writers to write on Çekil’s conceptually rigorous, formally sparse practice, to be able to situate his works in the here and the...
Vahap Avşar’s practice is slippery—an acutely self-aware narrator of his own work, his politics is direct, his visual language overt. Avşar’s work ranges in media, including painting—realistic and abstract—, sculpture, installation, and performance. His methodologies reflect a similar diversity, combining humorous punchlines with harsh political realism, realist representation with performance. He has...
Vahap Avşar’s “Black Album,” currently on view at Istanbul’s lovely Rampa Gallery, is a marvelous show. Its quiet, metaphorical registers are a departure from Avşar’s previous style, which found its strength in more overtly political statements and deft manipulation of popular iconography. On the other hand, “Black Album,” curated by...
https://vimeo.com/59828927 Guerilla Talks invited New York-based Vahap Avşar to talk about his early public interventions in Turkey in the mid- and late-1980s, as well as his return to art-making in 2007 after a decade-long hiatus. For the full article click here: http://artasiapacific.com/Blog/ArtHKLivePartThree
Vahap Avşar's isn't the classic story of an artist travelling abroad to study or to spend time on a residency program only then deciding to plant roots and stay away. Nor is his relocation simply the result of a foreign love affair; a desperate need to escape and be somewhere...
On a recent weekday evening on the Bowery, a motley crew of men attempted to shove a wrecked police cruiser through the sleek glass entryway of a contemporary-art gallery. The cruiser, its doors and hood removed, had been flipped onto its side. A man with a silver crew-cut and a...
