Mahir Kurtulan

Born in İzmir in 1978, Mahir Kurtulan encountered painting in the 1990s. Driven by his interest in stylized mythological figures, he pursued his education at Dokuz Eylül University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Traditional Turkish Arts. During this period, the sensitivity he developed toward the relationships between figure, surface, space, and diverse materials formed a conceptual foundation that would become central to his later practice.

Following his formal education, Kurtulan expanded his artistic thinking and material research through an interdisciplinary curiosity, turning toward the field of textiles. Textile design emerged as an alternative discipline through which he could explore artistic thought; it offered a research ground where surface, repetition, rhythm, and production processes could be tested both conceptually and physically. For nearly twenty years, alongside his artistic practice, he developed a sustainability-focused mode of production within the textile industry. His approach to recycling and the use of natural materials evolved not merely as conceptual choices, but as a holistic understanding that considers material and fabric as an integrated whole.

Seeking to bring these disciplines together on a shared ground, Kurtulan began his graduate studies and, in 2016, focused on Asian ink painting at Marmara University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Traditional Turkish Arts. During this period, he investigated the contemporary possibilities of abstraction within Eastern painting traditions through the tension between stain, flow, and control.

The artist’s work is structured around the relationships between layering, transparency, repetition, and surface. Stain-like structures formed through overlapping fields of color and front–back placements on transparent papers, fabrics, and canvas surfaces render concepts of time, memory, and perception visible within the pictorial space. In Kurtulan’s practice, the surface ceases to function as a fixed ground; instead, it becomes a perceptual field that is continuously reconstructed through the viewer’s gaze, carrying a sense of depth and vibration.

Traditional figures and images of nature appear in Kurtulan’s works not through direct representation, but as traces and evocations within a contemporary language of abstraction. The artist reflects on fragility, the delicate balance inherent in nature, and how refined natural forms can come together to create a powerful and enduring impact. In his work, nature is not treated as a passive theme, but as a living structure that embodies interaction, resistance, and continuity.

Mahir Kurtulan has participated in numerous national and international group exhibitions. Continuing his practice in his own studio, the artist approaches the surface as a site of thought and experience within contemporary painting, and sustains his research into perception, fragility, and modes of seeing.