Cold Food: Kemal Özen

Galerist hosts the exhibition of Kemal Özen, titled “Cold Food” from June 3 to July 3, 2010. Özen is among the young names of Turkish contemporary art, and in this exhibition his charcoal drawings will meet with art lovers for the first time.

While creating his works, the artist illustrates the components with their manifestations in the way he would like to see them, and unwinds. He gets these components from the people that breath in the same geography as himself, the news he reads, the events that affects him most but never lives him alone. Subsequently he sometimes emulates, sometimes hates them but he always carries them within him, and they have an influence on him.

Özen takes the events, people or news that we notice frequently in our surroundings, virtual or interactive environments, and get used to them by considering them “normal”; then he illustrates them in more efficient forms to make people get free of their accustomed blindness, and make them remember, by provoking them towards this way.

Özen says, “It is like I want to get rid of these people or feelings by taking their projections and imprisoning them into paper or canvas. By doing this, I get more close to being myself and somehow I get revenge from the people that become the subjects of my paintings, I show my reaction to them this way, because my language is painting, and I want to leave traces with my sentences. I like the observer to intervene with the stories in my paintings, and by thinking like that, I feel like I am entering a dialogue with people whom I do not know. It is one of my habits from my childhood, and I will never give up on this.”

About the Artist

Kemal Özen, born in 1984, lives and works in Samsun, Turkey. He decided to be educated on painting and quitted his training on Public Administration at Anadolu University Faculty of Economy, in the third year. Currently, it is his third year at the OndokuzMayisUniversity, Department of Arts Education and Crafts Teaching. His work titled “Doğa Parçası” (Piece of Nature) won the second prize in the contest, which was organized by Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University, among university students, in 2010, and the exhibition of this contest was his first group exhibition.