Özgür Kar Macabre

Özgür Kar’s (b.1992, TR) black and white video animations feature anthropomorphic characters, delivering contemporary tales poised between desire, melancholy, and loneliness. Trapped into the confined frame of flat screens, Kar’s figures whisper pulp monologues of tragedy and homoeroticism. Sorrowfully humoristic, these figures are often depicted in portrait format — as the screen of tablets and smart-phones — or constrained in intricate positions. Sketched out as white lines on black backgrounds, the slow-moving alter-egos unfold an emotional complexity through long soliloquies. The cerebral tones of Samuel Beckett, observing essential elements of the human condition in dark humorous ways, and Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette animated tales, enhancing facial expressions to express emotions or actions, come to mind. Rooting his influences in a variety of genres such as experimental theatre, European and Turkish folklore, early 20-century animation films as well as 1990’s MTV cartoons, Kar accumulates diverse sources to represent the shift in digital consumption, imagined as a cacophonic experience inducing confrontation.