Thoughts on Vahap Avşar’s Black Album

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 photocopied his hands, made paintings of asphalt, positioned himself in art history with Joseph Beuys and Cengiz Cekil, sent postcards labeled Forbidden Zone producing a transit that was forbidden itself, manufactured sweatshirts that said Guantanamo.