Kemal Önsoy's practice, informed by history, literature, poetry, and mythology, makes the fragmented and mutable nature of memory visible through paint, colour, texture, and form. By scraping back, covering and re-exposing successive layers of paint, the artist transforms the canvas into an archaeological surface, allowing different visual fragments belonging to the past and present to coexist on the same plane. In his compositions, where figurative and abstract elements intertwine, forms suggestive of the human body, organic structures, architectural remnants and landscapes emerge from and dissolve back into dense painterly surfaces. Processes of construction and dissolution, accumulation and erosion are central to Önsoy's practice. Drawing on the changing fabric of cities, architecture and cultural memory over time, the artist approaches the painted surface as a site where different histories and experiences accumulate layer upon layer. Having gradually expanded from archaeological and architectural references towards biological, organic, and cellular structures, Kemal Özsoy's visual language explores the transformation of matter across different scales.
