Heavy Ground

Artists

Özgür Kar

Press release

Emalin is pleased to present HEAVY GROUND, a solo exhibition by Özgür Kar (b. 1992 in Ankara, Turkey, lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands). This is the artist's second solo exhibition with the gallery. HEAVY GROUND comprises a new video consisting of hand-drawn animation, debuting the artist's first film work, alongside a series of works on paper.

In his practice, Özgür Kar contrasts historic and contemporary forms of cultural production to draw out their universal expressions of existentialism, whereby our senses of belonging and isolation are constantly at odds. Sincere feelings of longing, anxiety or loss are expressed in mediums and aesthetic conventions Kar draws from various cultural sources – such as medieval etchings, modernist theatre, 1970s hand-painted animation, or the vlogs and TikToks of the current day. He collapses contrasting affects of these forms – at times grotesque and graphic, at times sentimental and tender, but always speaking to a familiar human experience – into focused, minimalist animations and drawings.