Özgür Kar »Death's Right Hand«

Özgür Kar’s video works are deadpan existential vignettes – micro-dramas in which nothing really happens. Like a scene by Beckett reduced to its bare bones, they involve a lot of waiting; they are a lot like Limbo. The screens themselves are vessels for the protagonists they display and contain – their edges draw the cramped extremity of each character’s world. The protagonists are skeletons. Sometimes, they’re accompanied by a twittering bird, sometimes they blow into a flute or sigh. Stoic and mirthful, they ruminate on the circumstances of their existence, turning their tomb-screens into stages for modest tragedies. Since the dawn of time, nothing has really changed in human nature: Bugs Bunny is trapped in Dante’s Inferno.

This week both the 8th Yokohama Triennale, Japan, and the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, open with presentations of Kar’s work.

Özgür Kar (b. 1992, Ankara, Turkey) lives and works in Amsterdam. He is a graduate of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. Recent solo presentations include DUSK, Fridericianum, Kassel, DE, Intermissions, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL, US (2023). At the end of the day, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL (2022); STORAGE DRAMA, Emalin, UK (2021); MACABRE, Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris, FR (2021); Kunstverein Gartenhaus, Vienna, AT (2021); A Decade of Submission, Édouard Montassut, Paris, FR (2020) and A New Start, UKS, Oslo, NO (2019). Kar’s work has been included in group exhibitions at the 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, Lyon, FR (2022); Jeu de Paume, Paris, FR (2022); K.U.K. Kjøpmannsgata Ung Kunst, Trondheim, NO (2021); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR (2021); CAC Brétigny, FR (2020); Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, NL (2020); Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, NL (2018); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL (2017).