Rafet Arslan
About
Rafet Arslan, who brings different times together, along with the spirit and material they carry, desires to create a timeless poetic image. At the same time, a writer, musician, curator and performance artist, Arslan traces an aesthetic which establishes relationships between disciplines.
Arslan, with the montage technique he uses, establishes multi-layered image structures that make transitions between utopia and dystopia visible. Archiving the objects and images he collected from different sources, the artist begins to create stories with the concern of combining the material within the plastic values of the painting. For this purpose, the artist does not hesitate to use paper collage and digital image, paintings and installations side by side.
Arslan builds his pictorial practice on creating an abstract visual universe and adding up-to-date new images and stories to the Cobra Movement painting, which he admires.
He took part in the management of many exhibitions, performances and collective events such as Demolition 2011, Ubik Project, Reality Terror, Howl with Surrealist Action Group and Periferi Kolektif which he is also the founder of. Arslan still publishes poems, essays and articles in various publications and continues to work on new books and files. The artist also contributes to the sound universe as a storyteller role in the performance and music project called Robotic Dreams.
Arslan continues to live and work in Istanbul.