Across the Seas: Özer Kabaş and His Times

Across the Seas: Özer Kabaş and His Times examines the practice of artist, educator, and writer Özer Kabaş (1934–1998), ranging from painting and design to film and theater. It highlights Kabaş’s interest in various artistic disciplines, his approach to art education, and his contributions to Turkey’s cultural landscape.

Kabaş studied painting at the Yale School of Art from 1957 to 1962. He learned from structured methods of Josef Albers, a principal figure in shaping the Bauhaus curriculum at Yale, and the expressive style of painter Jack Tworkov, who had joined the faculty as a visiting professor in 1961. Kabaş was also influenced by New Images of Man, curated by Peter Selz at MoMA in 1959, which presented an alternative to Cold War Abstract Expressionism. This experience moved him toward psychological realism and social critique in his paintings.

While Kabaş is generally situated within the figurative tendencies in Turkey’s art scene, what mattered to him was not the style but the artist’s ability to develop a unique language rooted in geographical context and lived experience. Through concepts he developed in his writings, such as “montage,” “synthesis,” and “horizontal and vertical effects,” he explored the relationship between local visual culture and the international art scene. He rejected both the idea of tradition as something fixed and the uncritical adoption of the modernist lineage as a model. For him, art was shaped by the constant interaction of culture, history, geography, and everyday life. Alongside his painting and teaching, his short films, texts, and jewelry designs were part of the same intellectual quest.

From the 1970s onward, Kabaş focused on the sea, labor, and human relationships. Literary traditions ranging from Homer to Anatolian myths, along with coastal geographies and sea voyages, provided the theoretical basis for his practice. His focus on the world of fishermen, sailors, and dockworkers subsequently allowed him to engage with wider historical and social structures. The sea shaped his artistic practice, and painting became both a refuge from the burdens of daily life and a means for expression beyond the boundaries of language.

Kabaş taught at Robert College (Boğaziçi University) from 1964 to 1974 and helped develop the campus’s cultural environment as director of Social Hall and advisor to the Robert College Cinema Club. In 1971, he began teaching part-time at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts (later Mimar Sinan University), where he joined the core faculty of the Basic Design Education Chair and introduced the Bauhaus methodology into the curriculum. Following the program’s termination, he joined the Department of Painting and continued guiding many artists until his passing in 1998.

Across the Seas: Özer Kabaş and His Times sheds light on the turning points in Kabaş’s artistic and teaching practice from the 1960s to the 1990s. The exhibition features the artist’s paintings and original prints, as well as jewelry he designed at the Urart Art Studio, his 1967 film İstanbul Hatırası [Memory of Istanbul], the documentary he made with artist Altan Gürman on Marmara Island, and a selection of archival materials. These materials are presented alongside works by Mehmet Güleryüz, Fatma Tülin, and Sedat Pakay, artists whose professional trajectories intersected with Kabaş at various periods.

Programmed by Tuğçe Kaplan and Vasıf Kortun, Across the Seas: Özer Kabaş and His Times is on view at Salt Beyoğlu until March 14, 2027. For more information: saltonline.org.