For the exhibition, which you can visit between February 20 and March 25, 2025; here is an article by Curator/Art Writer İbrahim Karaoğlu:
"Looking back at an artist's journey usually presents a narrative of development: early explorations, the mature phase, stylistic changes… However, when looking at Orhan Zafer's painting, what we encounter is not a line of change but a strong continuity. This selection, titled "Traces Behind," does not show the transformation of an artist whose most vital passion is painting over the years; rather, it shows how the same perspective, the same understanding of humanity, deepens through different plastic languages.
For Orhan Zafer, painting is a field of witnessing before it is a field of aesthetic arrangement. His figures are not the subjects of a story; they are people who pass through the age, carrying burdens, walking, waiting, and remaining silent. Faces are often not clearly defined, but the mood is clear. Identities recede, humanity comes to the fore. This approach forms the ethical and aesthetic backbone that the artist has maintained throughout the periods.
When these paintings from different periods are placed side by side, the first thing that is noticed is the diversity of style. At times, an expressionistic paint energy, at times a graphic simplicity, at times a fragmented, gestural effect that creates a collage." compositions… However, these changes are not a search for direction, but expressions of the same direction with varying intensities. The form changes; the gaze remains fixed.
In the compositions, the figure often does not disappear within the space; it becomes a focal point that gives meaning to the space. Even in crowded scenes, the feeling of loneliness is preserved. This is one of the fundamental themes of Orhan Zafer's painting: the loneliness of the individual in the crowd.
The artist constructs the social through the individual; he relates the individual to a historical context.
The use of color is the emotional counterpart of this intellectual structure. In his paintings, color is not an atmosphere, but a layer of meaning.
This selection, while bringing together different periods of the artist, clearly reveals that Orhan Zafer has always focused more on the human being than the subject, more on the situation than the event, more on existence than the anecdote. His painting is not a visual record of the present; it is an intellectual expression of the human being's existence within the age.
What is seen when viewed from yesterday to today is not only the continuity of an art practice; it is also a stance. The stance of the artist's fidelity to his own painting, his own gaze, and his human-centered understanding. Therefore, this exhibition, "It shows not where a journey has arrived, but where it stood from the beginning. Orhan Zafer has stood in the same place from the beginning; alongside humanity.
And when he looks back, what remains is not just his paintings.
It is the indelible human traces left behind as time passes."
Who is Orhan Zafer?
A graduate of the Painting Department of the Faculty of Education at 19 May University. In addition to his painting work, he is also interested in caricature and photography.
He has held fourteen solo exhibitions, four of which were abroad (Austria, France, Northern Cyprus, Hungary). He has participated in many national and international art fairs, and has organized workshops and art events at the national level. He has also served as a jury member in many national and international competitions. His works have been accepted into official, private, and museum collections. As a result of the competitions he participated in, he received fourteen awards: three international, nine national, and two special awards.
A private gallery named "Orhan Zafer Gallery" has been opened within the Ankara RC Gallery in Bilkent Art Street, as part of the "private gallery in the name of a person" project, which was implemented for the first time in Turkey. A professional paint brand in Turkey registered the artist's most frequently used shade of blue as "ozblue-ozmavi," producing and marketing this paint in 2015. The artist is also a member of the Turkish Cartoonists Association, the United Painters and Sculptors Association, and the Black Sea Plastic Arts Association.
The artist spent the last 20 years of his 33-year career as an art educator at Ordu Fine Arts High School, where he served as a specialist art educator and Head of the Painting Department until 2025. He continues his work in studios called "Nar-ı Mavi" in Yalova and "Yedinci Ağaç" in Trabzon.
Source: Turkish Painting Association - United Kingdom - London