Serdar Seven

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Serdar Seven was born in Istanbul in 1978. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the renowned Mimar Sinan University.
During this time, Serdar participated in several exhibitions and competitions, winning the 62nd Lithography Competition of the Turkish Cultural Ministry in 2001. More prizes and competitions followed.

Making collages had always been at the back of his mind even while working with the more classical medium of oil on canvas. Yet it wasn’t until 2014 that he switched completely to his new medium: analogue / paper collage.

At the time, Serdar had already beencollecting materials for collages for ongoing canvas work but once he got into it full time, he started amassing his own library of books to cut.

Serdar is interested in the past in the sense that it shows us how life was lived back then. Through his collages he creates something contemporary while exploring the past, creating new meanings from found imagery.
The black and white imagery he prefers lends itself to this nostalgic feeling of days passed, giving it a touch of melancholy.

Serdar’s work mostly focuses on particular objects such as mountains, for their massive and organic forms, as well as ancient Greek sculptures and architectural elements for the timepassed that they represent.

Music and poetry have played a significant role in the development ofSerdar’s visual language. A song or a book often make up the emotional starting point, an idea that he then engages with his mind and hands until the emotion manifests into a collage.

For Serdar, collages are so much more than gluing one thing onto something else. Rather, they open up endless possibilities of creating new worlds from existing material.