H. Avni ÖZTOPÇU

 
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Where Does a Painting End?

Continuity and Relation in the Painting of H. Avni Öztopçu

 

When we look at an artist’s work across many years, we often begin by looking for similarities.

Does the same form return? Are the same colours used again? Does a motif persist, changing gradually over time? Does one series continue into another?

These are useful questions. Yet when H. Avni Öztopçu’s paintings are considered across the span of his production, another question becomes increasingly difficult to avoid:

Does an artist’s continuity really depend on maintaining the same forms?

The visual record of Öztopçu’s work from the mid-1980s to the 2020s makes a straightforward answer difficult. Forms change throughout the work. Some disappear, some fragment, and some are reorganized. Yet something else appears to have a longer life: the ways in which forms enter into relation with one another.

This is where the present reading begins.

In Öztopçu’s paintings, continuity can be considered not primarily as the preservation of a motif, but as a process in which one element is brought into relation with another, that relation is reorganized, and the resulting structure becomes the starting point for further relations.

This does not mean reducing the artist’s entire production to a single theory. On the contrary, it means asking again what, beneath the differences between periods and works, might connect them.

 

"Speculative Space" exhibition by H. Avni Öztopçu, Mimar Sinan University, Osman Hamdi Hall, Istanbul, 1989

At the Beginning, Not a Form but a Constructed World

In the opening of his 1989 study Kurgusal Mekân (Constructed Space), Öztopçu describes his artistic direction through the following problem:

“I am concerned with the problem of objectifying and giving form to the abstract world constructed intellectually by the human capacity to turn everything into an object.”

This statement is important for understanding the questions that emerge throughout his later work.

Öztopçu is not simply describing a problem of making abstract paintings. He is asking how thought can become form. Painting, in this sense, is less a representation of an already existing world than an act of constructing a world.

For this reason, Kurgusal Mekân need not be understood merely as a theoretical document belonging to 1989.

The more revealing question is whether the problem formulated there continues to operate in different forms in the work that follows.

To ask this, we need to move slightly away from the question of whether the same forms remain.

For what persists in Öztopçu’s work does not necessarily have to be form itself.

It may instead be the act of constructing.

 

Why Öztopçu’s Continuity Is Not Immediately Visible

Seen only through periods and series, Öztopçu’s production presents markedly different paintings.

His early works explore different possibilities of geometric and organic form. Later, bodies of work such as Tek and Korunak emerge. In subsequent works, the surface becomes increasingly vertical, fragmented, compressed and layered.

These changes are real, and they matter.

It is therefore impossible to say that Öztopçu made “the same painting” for four decades.

On the contrary, formal variability is one of the significant characteristics of the work.

The visual examination of the 1985–1994 period makes this particularly clear. Different formal possibilities appear alongside one another. Some works contain behaviours that can later be associated with particular series, while others resist the classifications that become more useful in retrospect. The early period should therefore not be treated as a simple story of the emergence of a single style.

A more useful distinction follows from this:

Continuity and sameness are not the same thing.

 

Portre I, 1985 - 65 × 55 cm, oil on canvas — No. 6

 

Three Forms of Continuity

At least three different kinds of continuity need to be distinguished when considering Öztopçu’s production.

The first is formal continuity: the recurrence of a form, motif or compositional scheme.

The second is relational continuity. Here, what matters is not the individual elements in isolation but the relations they establish with one another. One form may limit another; one surface may reveal another; one part may alter the significance of another; an element may become part of a new configuration.

The third is procedural continuity: the recurrence of operations such as dividing, comparing, multiplying, transferring, transforming or reorganizing.

These three forms do not exclude one another.

Indeed, Öztopçu’s work may be better understood by considering them together.

Yet when forms change so substantially across a long period, the recurrence of relations and operations becomes a particularly productive field of inquiry.

Relational continuity is therefore not presented here as a final conclusion, but as a lens through which the works can be looked at again.

 

The Unit Is More Than a Part

Within this approach, the word Birim—“unit”—takes on particular importance.

A unit can exist on its own.

But its significance does not necessarily reside in itself.

When one line encounters another, something different happens. When one surface is bounded by another, a new field appears. When one colour is compressed by another, it is perceived differently. When one form enters another, the result is not simply two forms placed side by side; something new emerges between them.

The unit in Öztopçu’s painting can therefore be considered not merely as a part, but as a structure capable of entering into relations.

This becomes especially visible in the artist’s own conception of the BİRİM exhibition.

 

Gezi MR-1, 1991 - 88 × 110 cm, oil on canvas — No. 38

From 1991 to 2020: When One Painting Enters Another

The online BİRİM / UNIT exhibition held at Mine Sanat Galerisi in 2020 identifies the 1991 painting Gezi MR-1 as its point of departure.

This matters for more than the exhibition’s chronology.

The exhibition’s own description proposes something more consequential: each painting is a composition made from its own elements, while also becoming an element in other two-part or multiple compositions.

The status of the painting changes.

A painting is no longer necessarily a closed object contained within its own frame.

One painting can be considered together with another.

One composition can become an element of another composition.

The unit is therefore both an outcome and a beginning.

This distinction is important because continuity here does not arise from copying a form. It arises when one structure makes the construction of another possible.

The reappearance of Gezi MR-1 as the point of departure for BİRİM in 2020 is therefore more than a chronological return. An earlier work acquires a new function within a new system of relations.

The painting itself may not have changed.

But its function has changed.

 

The Movement Is Not the Transfer of Form but the Rebuilding of Relation

This reveals a broader behaviour within Öztopçu’s practice.

A form may be moved elsewhere. A part may be reused in another composition. A surface may acquire a new boundary. An element may be removed from one function and incorporated into another structure.

Seen in this way, the work begins to look less like a repertoire of motifs and more like a repertoire of relations.

The visual research records behaviours such as covering, transferring, approaching, stamping, penetrating, mirroring, repeating-with-difference, self-generating ground and multiple registration. Their significance lies not in treating each as a separate “style,” but in what they reveal about the ways forms are made to operate with and against one another.

This distinction may offer a more productive way of approaching Öztopçu than placing his work simply under the heading of geometric abstraction.

Geometric forms can change.

Ways of establishing relations can reappear through different forms.

 

The Distance Between Kurgusal Mekân and the Later Paintings

Caution is necessary here.

The 1989 text Kurgusal Mekân does not allow us to conclude that Öztopçu had already planned to construct a relational system throughout all of his subsequent paintings. Such a claim would require direct evidence.

What can be said is more limited, but also more useful. In the 1989 text, Öztopçu explicitly discusses the transformation of thought into form, the construction of space, the relation between determinacy and indeterminacy, and the relationships established among forms. The thesis can therefore be approached not simply as a text about abstract painting, but as a field of inquiry into how meaning may be constructed through relations.

This is not proof of a direct historical causality.

It is, however, a productive research question:

Could the relations constructed within the painting in 1989 have gradually extended into relations between paintings in the years that followed?

The BİRİM exhibition makes this question particularly compelling.

 

The Boundary of a Painting

Perhaps the most productive way of looking at Öztopçu’s paintings begins with a change in the question itself.

When we look at a painting, we normally take the frame to define its boundary.

Yet in some of Öztopçu’s works, the movement does not seem to end within the frame.

A form turns towards another form. A surface limits another surface. A part can be transferred into another structure. A painting can acquire a new role in the construction of other paintings.

The boundary of a painting, in this sense, is not necessarily only a physical boundary.

Perhaps a painting ends where its relations end.

If a relation is established again elsewhere, however, the conceptual movement of the painting may continue there.

The inclusion of Gezi MR-1, made in 1991, as the point of departure for the BİRİM exhibition in 2020 is significant in precisely this respect.

A painting made in the past is brought into a new structure and given a new function.

Continuity is therefore not a straight line through time.

It is closer to a way of reconnecting.

 

2022  6 December 2022–4 January 2023, CKM Art Gallery, Caddebostan, Istanbul. (85–22)

 

Why Tek and Korunak Are More Than Series

The works associated with Tek and Korunak can also be reconsidered from this perspective.

This does not mean reducing the meaning of these bodies of work to relational continuity. Rather, their forms appear to operate in relation to the surrounding field, to boundaries, compression, openness and enclosure.

Earlier research has identified time and the perception of space as central concerns in Öztopçu’s practice and has situated Tek and Korunak around these questions.

The word Korunak itself is revealing. A shelter does not exist independently of what it shelters.

A boundary acquires meaning in relation to what it bounds.

An interior can only be understood together with an exterior.

Öztopçu’s geometry therefore does more than organise geometric forms.

Geometry itself becomes relational.

 

B. Korunak, 2011 - 104x235 cm oil on canvas — No. 133

 

What Is Active Is Not Only Form but Surface

At this point, the plastic behaviour described as Etkin Madde—“Active Matter”—also becomes significant.

In Öztopçu’s painting, paint, surface, mass, colour and boundary are not merely supporting elements.

A surface can compress a form. A colour can suppress another colour or bring it forward. A mass can alter the space around it. A boundary can protect an area or open it.

The pictorial elements are therefore not simply things that are present.

They act upon one another.

This concern can already be sensed in Öztopçu’s early writings, where he argues that the relations among colour, line, composition, movement and direction must themselves be worked through, and that each increase in relation brings new problems with it.

Read from the perspective of the later work, this becomes especially striking.

For Öztopçu, relation is not merely a principle of decorative composition.

Relation is part of the problem the painting has to solve.

 

What May Distinguish Öztopçu Is Not Form Itself

It is possible to classify Öztopçu’s production through its forms.

But such a classification does not fully explain why the artist has needed different forms at different moments.

A more revealing question may be:

How is the same problem reconstructed through different forms?

From this perspective, Kurgusal Mekân of 1989, the later Tek and Korunak works, and the BİRİM exhibition of 2020 can be placed at a more interesting distance from one another.

They do not have to be declared continuations of one another.

Nor is it necessary to construct a direct and uninterrupted formal line between them.

Instead, we can ask how each engages with problems of constructing, bounding, relating and reorganising.

This approach does not diminish the differences between the works.

It makes those differences more intelligible.

 

Continuity as a Field of Inquiry

The central proposition of this essay is perhaps not the statement that “Öztopçu has relational continuity”.

A more cautious and more productive proposition would be:

Öztopçu’s long-term practice invites renewed examination through the relations that forms establish with one another and with space, rather than through the forms themselves alone.

Relational continuity is therefore retained not as a closed theory but as a concept capable of generating further readings.

The visual atlas developed during the research records different kinds of relations and behaviours. This is useful, but it would be premature to claim that these categories have been applied exhaustively to the entire body of work. A more systematic sampling of the larger corpus remains to be undertaken.

That limitation does not invalidate the present reading.

It defines its scope.

This essay does not claim to provide the final explanation of Öztopçu’s art.

It proposes a strong opening through which the work can be seen again.

 

2020  September–November, Online Exhibition, organized by Mine Art Gallery. (BİRİM)

 

A Way of Seeing an Artist Again

To say something new about an artist does not always require inventing a new concept.

Sometimes it is enough to look differently at what has been there all along.

Perhaps that is what has remained visible, yet insufficiently recognised, in Öztopçu’s paintings.

A form does not stand entirely on its own.

A surface does not act alone.

A boundary is not merely a boundary.

A painting does not necessarily close in upon itself.

And a painting made years earlier can be read again through its relation to other paintings.

The fact that Gezi MR-1 of 1991 became the point of departure for the BİRİM exhibition in 2020 offers one of the clearest examples.

The artist’s past is not simply repeated.

It is made to work again.

Perhaps this is where Öztopçu’s continuity is most productively sought.

 

Conclusion: From Unit to Relation

When Avni Öztopçu’s art is considered across a long period of time, the first thing we encounter is change.

Forms change.
Surfaces change.
Compositions change.
Series change.

Yet another movement can be traced through these changes:

one thing is brought into relation with another.

Sometimes this is an encounter between forms.

Sometimes it is one surface limiting another.

Sometimes it is the transfer of a part into a new structure.

Sometimes it is a painting acquiring a new function within the construction of other paintings.

And sometimes it is a work made years earlier becoming the conceptual starting point of a new exhibition.

For this reason, Öztopçu’s continuity cannot be adequately understood through the idea of simply repeating the same thing.

Perhaps his continuity lies precisely in not repeating the same thing, but beginning again each time by establishing a new relation.

The word Birim—unit—takes on another meaning in this context.

A unit is not an end.

It is where another structure can begin.

Perhaps, then, the most productive way to encounter Öztopçu’s work today is not to ask which form he repeated, but to stand before the painting with another question:

What becomes something else in this painting, and through what relation does that transformation occur?

The question is not intended to explain Öztopçu’s painting once and for all.

It is meant to give us a reason to stay with it longer.

And perhaps this is also where the possibility of introducing the artist to a wider world begins: not by placing him immediately within a ready-made art-historical category, but by opening a door through which a viewer can enter the work with a question of their own.

 

Sources and Research Materials

Öztopçu, H. Avni. Kurgusal Mekân. Sanatta Yeterlik thesis, Mimar Sinan University, Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Painting, 1989. MSGSÜ Open Science and Art Archive.

Öztopçu, H. Avni. Işık – Mekân – Obje (Kurgusal Mekân). Mimar Sinan University, 1986. Artist's document consulted as part of the present research.

Öztopçu, H. Avni. BİRİM / UNIT. Mine Sanat Galerisi, online exhibition, 2020. The exhibition identifies the 1991 Gezi MR-1 and subsequent “single-centred” works as its point of departure.

Öztopçu, H. Avni. Artist's archive: exhibition catalogues, artwork records, exhibition documents and visual records. Primary material examined for the period 1985–2024.

Marmara University. “Dr Öğr Üyesi H Avni Öztopçu’nun ‘Birim’ İsimli Sergisi Sanal Ortamda Sanat Severlerle Buluşuyor.” 25 September 2020.

 

Research and Contribution Note

This study was prepared by Gökçe Eren.

The research is based primarily on H. Avni Öztopçu’s works, interviews conducted with the artist, exhibition and artwork catalogues, the artist’s own writings, archival documents and visual material from different periods. In particular, the interviews conducted by Gökçe Eren with H. Avni Öztopçu in 2026 constitute one of the primary sources used in evaluating the artist’s working process and the relations among works produced at different points in his practice.

During the research and conceptual development of the study, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini were used as AI-assisted research tools. They were used to compare extensive visual and documentary material, investigate possible relations among works and periods, develop alternative interpretations, search for counter-examples, test proposed assumptions and subject the developing text to criticism from different perspectives.

Information, interpretations or suggestions produced by these AI tools were not treated as evidence in themselves. Where possible, relevant findings were checked against the works, the artist’s own writings, interviews, catalogues, archival documents and verifiable institutional sources. Responsibility for the conceptual direction of the research, the selection of works, the evaluation of interpretations, the conclusions and the final form of the manuscript rests with the author.

The AI tools used in the research and development process are not authors or co-authors of this study.