KEMAL ONSOY - NAMELESS

Born in Eğridir in 1954, Kemal Önsoy graduated from the Istanbul State School of Applied Fine Arts in 1980. The artist continued his work in New York for a while and returned to Istanbul in 1993.

Kemal Önsoy processes his paintings like an archaeologist who observes the structural ruins of human history. In his works, he creates the passage of time and successive structures on a single picture plane. With the layers of paint he piles on top of each other, he repeats the architectural remains that always overlap in a visual integrity. He thinks about the crumbling and fragmentation of history over time, and the covering of the sediments of the past with a covering layer. The layers in Önsoy's paintings are components; each layer of color and texture is effective on its own. The layers of color and shape that appear in the depth of these works processed in the form of a network give birth to a complex order on the same surface. The narrative, historical and physical accumulation formed by the coming together of layers, each with different meanings, turns the paintings into reservoirs where the history of the human body and architectural structures come together.