Özgür Kar

Stedelijk Museum | Amsterdam, Netherlands

SAHA provided support for the acquisition Özgür Kar’s work titled The Undead to enter Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam’s permanent collection. The immersive installation by Özgür Kar presents the corpses as characters in a play. Filled with existential angst and dark humor – inspired by the MTV cartoon Beavis and Butt-Head – the work is a continuation of Kar’s preoccupation with society’s growing addiction to screens. Instead of presenting a clear narrative, the play loops, and the corpses’ musings become an endless blur of words echoing the dulling nature of mindless scrolling.

About Özgür Kar

Özgür Kar (b. 1992 in Ankara, Turkey) lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Kar’s works assemble in space to function as scenes from theatre pieces: each serves as a character playing its part within a non-linear score and script. Working with voice actors and instrumentalists, Kar produces multi-part soundscapes that unfold through solemn repetition, forging existential dread mixed with cartoonish macabre. Stoic in their contemplation, his minimally animated drawings are set in imperceptible loops that turn videos into sculptures confined within the edge of television screens. Beyond the camp-ness of macabre, or the grotesque anxiety of death juxtaposed with cartoonish figures, the theatricality of Kar’s work is set in tonal displays of contemporary existentialism.

About Stedelijk Museum

The Stedelijk Museum was founded in 1874 by a group of private citizens in Amsterdam, led by C.P. van Eeghen, who donated funds and their art collections to establish a museum in the capital of the Netherlands that would be devoted to modern art. The collection, housed at first at the Rijksmuseum, was moved in 1895 into the Museum’s own building, designed by A.W. Weissman.