H. Avni ÖZTOPÇU

 
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The Reconstruction of an Artistic Concept

H. Avni Öztopçu’s Kurgusal Mekân: Sources, Concepts, and Pictorial Continuity
 

 

Abstract

This study reconsiders H. Avni Öztopçu’s 1989 proficiency-in-art thesis Kurgusal Mekân (Speculative Space) without imposing theoretical models developed retrospectively onto his later artistic production. Instead, it examines the conceptual structure of the original document and the sources with which it engages. Its central question is how the concept of “kurgusal mekân” emerged from particular intellectual sources and how these sources were transformed within Öztopçu’s own pictorial practice into an original form of artistic thinking.

The study adopts a layered approach to sources, distinguishing the primary document from subsequent scholarly interpretations. The 1989 text draws on Wilhelm Worringer, Immanuel Kant, Max Scheler, and Paul Klee in different contexts, while Schopenhauer enters the discussion indirectly through Worringer. The conceptual movement of the document is traced through abstraction, space, object, opposition, visibility, gradation, determinacy and indeterminacy, color, direction, placement, and the relationship between motif and ornament. Particular attention is given to the way “opposition” functions not merely as a theoretical definition but as a principle connected to visibility and pictorial construction.

A second major axis of the study is the developmental account established in the “Highlights” section of the 1989 text through a sequence of paintings. The relationships among Two Windows, Torch, Leaves, Ivy, Flowered Column, Red Section, Red Valley, Between Columns, and Dotted Column are considered not as a closed system constructed retrospectively, but as a sequence of pictorial problems recorded by the artist himself.

The study therefore argues that it is more accurate to understand “kurgusal mekân” not as a quantitative or algorithmic model, but as an original mode of pictorial thinking developed by Öztopçu in the late 1980s.

Keywords: H. Avni Öztopçu, Kurgusal Mekân, abstraction, opposition, visibility, determinacy-indeterminacy, Worringer, Scheler, Kant, Paul Klee

 

1. Introduction: Returning a Concept to Its Source

Conceptual texts produced by artists in order to articulate their own practices carry two risks for subsequent research. The first is that the historical and intellectual sources of the concepts employed by the artist may be overlooked. The second is that theoretical concepts developed later may be projected backward, attributing to the artist ideas that were not originally part of his thinking.

H. Avni Öztopçu’s 1989 Kurgusal Mekân is a particularly significant case in this respect. The text engages with intellectual sources concerning the foundations of abstract art while simultaneously attempting to define problems arising from the artist’s own pictorial practice. To read the text merely as a summary of theories would therefore be reductive; but transforming it retrospectively into a comprehensive philosophical system would also obscure the structure of the original document.

This study seeks to avoid both reductions.

The central question is:

Within what network of sources did Öztopçu’s concept of “kurgusal mekân” emerge, and how were these sources transformed into a distinctive conceptual order within his pictorial practice?

To answer this question, source and interpretation must first be distinguished, followed by a distinction between the artist’s own statements and later scholarly inferences. The presence of a concept in Öztopçu’s text does not have the same epistemic status as a subsequent researcher’s development of a new interpretation based on that concept.

For this reason, Kurgusal Mekân is treated here first and foremost as a historical document in its own right.

 

2. The Position of the Document and Its Layers of Sources

Öztopçu’s Kurgusal Mekân was completed in 1989 as a proficiency-in-art thesis at the Institute of Social Sciences of Mimar Sinan University. The institutional record confirms the thesis date, author, advisor Dinçer Erimez, and the existence of a bibliography.

The text belongs to a period in which the artist directly related his pictorial practice to his theoretical reading. In the preface, Öztopçu states that although books, writings, and oral explanations contributed to the work, what gave the study its formative character was his own paintings and the preservation of the thoughts through which those paintings had come into being. This statement is important because it establishes the relationship between theory and practice from within the document itself.

The 1989 text draws on Worringer, Kant, Max Scheler, and Paul Klee in different ways. Schopenhauer, meanwhile, appears not as an independent theoretical source but through an argument transmitted by Worringer. The bibliography also includes Bedia Akarsu, İsmail Tunalı, Saffet Suner, and other contemporary philosophical and aesthetic sources.

This distinction matters. The fact that an artist refers to a philosopher does not mean that the philosopher constitutes the foundational source of the artist’s entire intellectual system.

The sources are therefore distinguished here according to the following levels:

• Primary source: Öztopçu’s own writings, particularly the 1989 Kurgusal Mekân document.

• Close testimony and subsequent research: the artist’s later statements and later research concerning his work.

• Theoretical sources: figures such as Worringer, Kant, Scheler, and Klee to whom Öztopçu refers in the 1989 document.

• Subsequent interpretation: interpretive accounts developed later from these sources or from Öztopçu’s paintings.

Keeping these layers distinct is a fundamental methodological condition of the study.

 

3. An Abstract World: Worringer and the Problem of Abstraction

One of the intellectual points of departure of Kurgusal Mekân is the problem of abstraction. Öztopçu draws here on Wilhelm Worringer’s discussion of the abstraction impulse in Abstraction and Empathy.

In Worringer’s account, the impulse toward abstraction is associated with a sense of unease before the surrounding world and with what he describes as a fear of space. Abstraction is therefore not merely a formal operation through which forms are separated from nature; it is also understood as a more fundamental psychological and existential response to the human position within the world.

Öztopçu’s engagement with this source is significant, but the distinction between source and original synthesis must nevertheless be maintained. Worringer’s theory functions as one of the points of departure for Öztopçu’s thinking about his own pictorial practice. This does not mean that his paintings constitute an “application” of Worringer’s theory.

The Turkish edition consulted by Öztopçu was published in 1971 in a translation by İsmail Tunalı, and the source record in the 1989 document identifies this edition.

Schopenhauer enters the same discussion through Worringer. In Öztopçu’s footnote, the passage concerning Schopenhauer’s Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie is transmitted through Worringer’s book rather than cited as an independently consulted source.

The source chain is therefore most accurately represented as:

Öztopçu → Worringer → Schopenhauer

This distinction is important because it preserves the actual route through which the idea reaches Öztopçu’s text.

 

4. Space and Object: Separating Space from the Physical Object

One of the decisive points in the construction of “kurgusal mekân” is the section titled “Space and Object.”

Here space is not treated in the everyday sense as an empty container within which objects exist. Rather, it becomes a problem of construction related to the arrangement, condition, and ordering of things.

Scheler and Kant enter this discussion from different directions.

Through Scheler, space is considered in relation to the relational ordering of things. Through Kant, the question arises of whether space and time can be treated as ordinary objects derived from experience. In this passage, however, Öztopçu’s footnote does not cite Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason directly; it refers instead to Saffet Suner’s Düşüncenin Tarihteki Evrimi (The Evolution of Thought in History) as the source through which the Kantian discussion is presented.

Space thereby moves from being understood as a physical object toward becoming a problem of mental and relational construction.

This is essential to understanding the basis of “kurgusal mekân.”

The word “kurgusal” should not here be understood simply as imaginary or unreal. What is at stake is the emergence of a spatial reality through the reconstruction of visual elements within particular relationships.

“Speculative space,” in this sense, can be summarized as follows:

Not the representation of a physically given space, but the construction of a new spatial order through relationships among pictorial elements.

Line, color, and plane are therefore not merely instruments of the painting; they participate in the construction of space itself.

 

5. Opposition: From Concept to Pictorial Function

One of the most prominent concepts in the 1989 text is opposition.

Öztopçu defines opposition in terms of a quantitative or qualitative counter-effect arising among sensory stimuli situated alongside one another in space or time, and he emphasizes that oppositions determine one another’s existence. The gradation of opposition is also related to visibility.

Opposition here does not simply mean “contrasting colors.” The concept becomes a more general relational principle.

The degree of opposition affects visibility. As oppositions approach their extremes, they produce effects of clarity, definiteness, and solidity. Öztopçu relates his own pictorial practice to this relational structure.

What matters here is that “opposition” is already present as a concept in the 1989 document.

A later researcher may develop concepts such as “tension” or “balance” from these oppositions, but such terms do not thereby become Öztopçu’s own concepts.

There is a distance between what Öztopçu says and what may subsequently be inferred from his statements.

That distance must be preserved.

 

6. Visibility and Gradation

The function of opposition in Öztopçu’s thought is directly connected to the problem of visibility.

As the degree of an opposition changes, so does the degree of visibility of a form. Oppositions approaching their extremes produce more pronounced effects, while other degrees of opposition generate more complex perceptual relationships.

What is significant is that visibility does not remain merely a problem of seeing. Visibility emerges from relationships among forms.

The conceptual movement of the 1989 text can therefore be summarized, in simplified form, as:

opposition → gradation → visibility

This formulation does not mean that a measurement system is being introduced into the text from outside. Öztopçu’s reference to quantitative and qualitative opposition does not mean that he established a mathematical method of measurement.

For the same reason, later methodological terms such as “quantitative phenomenology” should not be attributed directly to the 1989 text.

 

7. Color: Hue, Value, and Saturation

The discussion of color demonstrates that kurgusal mekân does not consist solely of geometrical relationships.

Öztopçu considers color through qualities corresponding to hue, value, and saturation, and draws on the Munsell color system. Color is thus treated not merely as an emotional or decorative element but as a plastic variable that can be organized and compared. The 1989 text explicitly classifies color oppositions through the distinctions of hue, value, and saturation within the Munsell system.

There is nevertheless an important boundary to maintain here.

The Munsell system is a system for describing color. Its use by Öztopçu does not mean that his entire pictorial practice was transformed into a scientific system of color measurement.

The reference to Paul Klee in the discussion of color opposition reveals another source relationship. In his earlier master’s study, Işık-Mekân-Obje (Light-Space-Object), Öztopçu discusses light-dark opposition together with temperature opposition and refers to Klee. In the 1989 text, however, the problem of color is reorganized through the distinctions of hue, value, and saturation associated with Munsell. Klee therefore appears as a specific source within a particular context, not as the source from which Öztopçu’s entire compositional language derives.

Two layers must therefore be distinguished:

1. Öztopçu’s own use within his pictorial vocabulary;

2. the specific context in which he draws on Klee.

This distinction does not weaken the artist’s relation to his sources. On the contrary, it makes his method of working with sources more visible.

 

8. Determinacy and Indeterminacy

One of the important conceptual consequences of Kurgusal Mekân is the possibility that formal definition and overall indeterminacy may coexist within the same painting.

This point is particularly significant for subsequent readings of Öztopçu’s work. Individual forms may become increasingly distinct while the meaning or spatial organization of the whole does not necessarily become equally closed.

A statement in the 1989 text makes this relationship explicit:

“Definition in forms is achieved through the unfolding of opposition.”

This suggests an important paradox within “kurgusal mekân”: local definition does not necessarily produce overall certainty.

No matter how clearly a form becomes defined, its position within the whole may be reopened by other relationships.

For this reason, Öztopçu’s pictorial thinking cannot adequately be described as one of “geometrical certainty.” Its structure emerges from the relationship between forms that become defined and a whole that remains open.

 

9. Motifs, Ornament, and Formal Transformation

One section of the 1989 text is titled “Motifs and Ornaments.”

Here Öztopçu records a transformation occurring from late 1986 into early 1987. A movement appears from an earlier conception of geometrical ornament toward freer forms.

The significance of this passage lies in the fact that the change is recorded within the artist’s own retrospective account rather than imposed afterward through an art-historical schema.

The safest approach is therefore to treat this transformation as testimony contained in the document itself.

It also demonstrates that “kurgusal mekân” is not a static repertoire of forms. The concept changes as the artist encounters different pictorial problems in the course of production.

 

10. Placement: Edge, Frame, and Relation

The section on “Placement” brings the relationship between spatial construction and the surface of the painting into clearer focus.

What matters is not only what a form is, but where it is located.

The relationships among edge, frame, and surface affect the meaning and visibility of forms. Pictorial space therefore becomes more than the sum of the forms contained within it; the relation between form and surface also becomes part of spatial construction.

This is one of the important ways in which “kurgusal mekân” differs from a classical conception of perspective.

The aim is not to reproduce the three-dimensional world illusionistically on a two-dimensional surface. The surface itself becomes an active field in which forms establish relationships with one another.

“Placement” is therefore not a secondary issue within kurgusal mekân but one of its conditions of construction.

 

11. “Highlights”: Tracing the Concept Through Paintings

One of the most valuable sections of the 1989 text is “Highlights,” where conceptual explanations are brought into relation with particular paintings.

Öztopçu does not merely list his works; he also describes developmental relationships among several of them in his own terms.

One starting point is Two Windows. It is followed by Torch, which the artist describes as a development of Two Windows.

This relationship is significant. The paintings are not treated simply as independent objects but as successive stages in the development of a pictorial problem.

With Leaves, a process of “breathing” begins. In Ivy, expansion increases. Flowered Column then establishes further formal relationships.

The sequence continues through works such as Red Section, Red Valley, Between Columns, and Dotted Column.

The relationship among these works should not be treated as a typology imposed from outside, but first and foremost as a developmental sequence recorded by the artist himself.

This does not prevent later researchers from establishing new relationships among the works. Such relationships, however, should be identified as interpretations rather than presented as a system originally planned by Öztopçu.

 

12. Kurgusal Mekân as Pictorial Continuity

Taken together, this sequence of works suggests that kurgusal mekân is not a completed formal system.

On the contrary, the concept opens onto different problems in different paintings:

• the increasing definition of oppositions,

• the separation of forms from one another,

• expansion,

• relationships between center and edge,

• the enlargement of color fields,

• the emergence of column-like structures,

• changing relations between individual forms and the whole.

For this reason, it is more illuminating to describe kurgusal mekân not as a “formula” but as a field of problems operating within the production of painting.

Space is not given here; it is constructed.

Yet this construction is not a one-time event. Each new painting modifies relationships that emerged in earlier paintings and produces a new order.

The relationship between Two Windows and Dotted Column should therefore not be read as a closed theory reconstructed backward from its conclusion, but as a continuity documented by the artist’s own records of his production.

 

13. After 1989: Distinguishing Document from Interpretation

The 1989 Kurgusal Mekân text is a primary source for subsequent research on Öztopçu. Yet not every interpretation of his later works and writings can automatically be traced back to the 1989 document.

This distinction is particularly important in relation to Gökçe Eren’s 2026 study What Carries the Painting?

Eren’s research relates concepts from the 1989 text to later paintings while producing new observations and typological connections. For example, the concept of the “carrier” should be understood not as a term directly taken from Öztopçu’s 1989 vocabulary, but as a concept developed by the researcher for interpreting later works.

Likewise, if the sequence Gezinti → Gezgin → Kuşatılmış Gezgin is identified as a typological line constructed retrospectively by the researcher rather than as a trilogy originally conceived by the artist, that distinction must be maintained.

Two different forms of knowledge are involved here:

Document: What the artist wrote or stated at a particular historical moment.

Interpretation: A relationship established by a researcher among works and documents from different periods.

Conflating the two may increase the apparent coherence of a study, but it reduces its historical accuracy.

 

14. Where Does the Originality of Kurgusal Mekân Begin?

The presence of Worringer, Kant, Scheler, and Klee in the 1989 text does not imply that Öztopçu’s thinking lacks originality.

The originality of an artist’s thinking does not depend on having invented every concept used from scratch.

The more meaningful question is:

How were these ideas made to function differently within the artist’s own problems of production?

In Öztopçu’s text, originality becomes particularly visible in the pictorial relationships that emerge after these sources are brought into his own field of practice.

The problem of abstraction is related to the problem of space; space to the relation among object and surface; opposition to visibility; visibility to gradation; and defined forms to an overall indeterminacy.

This chain is not simply a restatement of Worringer or Scheler.

It is a relational structure developed by the artist in order to think through his own pictorial practice.

The most productive way to understand Kurgusal Mekân is therefore not to ask:

“Which philosopher’s theory did he apply?”

but rather:

“Drawing on which sources, and through what transformations, did he conceptualize his own pictorial problems?”

 

15. Conclusion: Returning Kurgusal Mekân to Its Source

H. Avni Öztopçu’s 1989 Kurgusal Mekân offers a substantial field for subsequent theoretical interpretation. Yet this potential does not require the concept to be detached from its historical source.

On the contrary, returning to the structure of the original document reveals a stronger and more precise line of thought.

Kurgusal Mekân begins with the problem of abstraction, proceeds through the distinction between physical object and space, develops into the relational construction of line, color, and plane, and moves through opposition and visibility, the coexistence of determinacy and indeterminacy, direction and placement, before reaching their concrete manifestations in the production of painting.

Various sources stand behind this mode of thinking. Worringer provides an important intellectual framework for the problem of abstraction. Kant opens another line concerning the status of space in relation to experience. Scheler enters the discussion of space and object. Klee provides an important reference in the context of color and movement. Schopenhauer appears in the 1989 text through a secondary source relationship mediated by Worringer.

None of these sources, however, constitutes an explanation of Kurgusal Mekân on its own.

Öztopçu’s original contribution should instead be sought in the way he brought these different intellectual sources into relation with the problems of his own pictorial production and reorganized them within a specific sequence of plastic relationships.

For this reason, rather than retrospectively redefining “kurgusal mekân” through later concepts such as “algorithmic,” “quantitative,” “cognitive,” or “epiphylogenetic,” it is necessary first to determine what the concept actually means within the 1989 document.

This priority is not merely a methodological precaution. It is also a matter of respect for the artist’s thinking.

Developing an artist’s concept and replacing it with another concept are not the same thing.

The significance of rereading Kurgusal Mekân today lies precisely here. The text does not present a completed and closed theory so much as it records relationships formed within the act of painting. These relationships remain open to further research; but the strength of such research depends first on its ability to distinguish accurately what the source itself says.

From this perspective, Kurgusal Mekân is not merely a 1989 art text. It is one of the fundamental documents of the conceptual language Öztopçu developed while thinking through his own pictorial practice.

 

 

References

Akarsu, Bedia. Çağdaş Felsefe Akımları. Istanbul: Ministry of National Education Publications, Düşün Dizisi 3, 1979.

Klee, Paul. Çağdaş Sanat Kuramı. Translated by Mehmet Dündar. Ankara: Dost Kitabevi Yayınları. The publication year of the edition consulted in the 1989 Kurgusal Mekân text is not specified.

Öztopçu, H. Avni. Işık-Mekân-Obje. Istanbul: Mimar Sinan University, Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Painting, Master’s Study Report, 1986.

Öztopçu, H. Avni. Kurgusal Mekân. Proficiency-in-Art Thesis. Istanbul: Mimar Sinan University, Institute of Social Sciences, 1989. Advisor: Dinçer Erimez.

Öztopçu, H. Avni. Renk Karşıtlığı. Istanbul: Mimar Sinan University, Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Painting, research report within the Proficiency-in-Art curriculum, 1987.

Scheler, Max. İnsanın Kosmostaki Yeri. Translated by Tomris Mengüşoğlu. Istanbul: İstanbul Matbaası, 1968.

Suner, Saffet. Düşüncenin Tarihteki Evrimi. Istanbul, 1967. Cited in the Kant-related footnote of Kurgusal Mekân.

Tunalı, İsmail. Felsefenin Işığında Modern Resim. Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1981.

Worringer, Wilhelm. Soyutlama ve Einfühlung. Translated by İsmail Tunalı. 2nd ed. Istanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, no. 1027, 1971.

Eren, Gökçe. 2026. What Carries the Painting? Research on Öztopçu’s pictorial practice.

 

 

Source and Methodological Note

This study takes as its principal methodological principle the distinction between H. Avni Öztopçu’s own writings and the interpretations of subsequent researchers. A concept that does not explicitly occur in the 1989 Kurgusal Mekân document is not presented as an Öztopçu concept. Interpretations emerging in subsequent research are, wherever possible, retained as belonging to their respective researchers and historical contexts.

This distinction is particularly important in an age in which artificial intelligence increasingly participates in research and textual production. An interpretation generated by an AI system does not constitute historical evidence unless it has been verified against a primary document. The purpose of this study is therefore not to invent a new theoretical system, but to make the conceptual structure of an existing document clearer, more traceable, and more open to verification.

This study does not replace the 1989 Kurgusal Mekân document. It is designed as a secondary study that facilitates its reading and makes visible the relationships among source, concept, and pictorial continuity.

 

Research and Contribution Note

This study was written by Pınar Sumer Biber.
 

The research and conceptual development of the study were supported by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini as AI-assisted research tools. These tools were used to examine the 1989 Kurgusal Mekân document from different perspectives, compare interpretations, test conceptual connections and identify possible weaknesses in the developing argument.

AI-generated information or interpretations were not treated as evidence in themselves. The analysis was grounded in Öztopçu’s own text and writings, cited sources, artwork records and verifiable institutional materials.

Responsibility for the research argument, source selection, interpretation, conclusions and final text rests with the author. The AI tools used in the research and writing process are not authors or co-authors of this study.