RASİM AKSAN (B. 1984)

Rasim Aksan’s hyperrealist practice testifies to the cultural and visual bombardment of contemporary media. Using an archive of thousands of images collected both from the internet and his own photography, Aksan constructs fantastical scenes that interrogate the discrepancies between predetermined ethical codes and the voyeuristic culture that permeates society. Depicting human figures and domestic scenes transformed into surreal, staged interiors, Aksan questions the conditions of our cultural heritage and social interactions.

Drawing heavily on a wealth of images from the art-historical canon, Aksan’s works are brimming with references to Japanese printmaking, Egyptian hieroglyphics, classical European sculpture, ancient Greek amphoras and Surrealism, among others. Ultimately, the symbols imbued by these cultural citations allow the artist to explore an aesthetic of beauty and grace, tradition and modernity. Within the deliberately shaped boundary of his highly technical airbrush works such as Live a Life You Will Remember, Aksan stages a snapshot of an unknown resident’s recently vacated bedroom that is otherwise animated by the artist’s magical melange of historical, religious and contemporary cultural symbols.

Rasim Aksan currently lives and works in Istanbul. He is represented by Galerist, Istanbul, where he has been the subject of multiple solo exhibitions including Neo (2020) and 12.12.12 (2016). From March to July 2022, Aksan was included in the group exhibition Oeuvre and Grace at the Erimtan Archaeology and Arts Museum, Ankara, alongside Roman, Urartian, Hittite, and Byzantine artefacts from the museum’s collection.