Kemal Seyhan, who received his art education in Vienna and stands out among contemporary artists in Austria, is organizing his first solo exhibition in Turkey at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery.

He studied Sociology at Boğaziçi University in 1981 before moving to Vienna the same year. There, he studied art history and philosophy at the University of Vienna (1985-1987). He then continued his art education in the painting and graphics department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna under the guidance of Prof. Adolf Frohner (1987-1996), completing it with "outstanding success."

In 1987, he participated in his first artistic event, the 1st Vienna Art Symposium "Interaktion." In 1988, he exhibited in the group exhibition "Reaktionen" in Vienna.

He also began working in stage design and in 1991, he designed the stage for the play "Niemand auf Reisen" directed by Gül Gürses. He continued his work in this field successfully in the following years.

In 1992, he participated in group exhibitions such as "Art Protect Rainforest" in Salzburg and "Positionen" in Vienna. In 1993, he won the Vorarlberg State Prize at the 23rd Austrian Graphic Competition. In 1994, he participated in the group exhibition "Reaktionen" in Vienna, in 1995, in the group exhibition "Event," and in the award exhibition of the "Jeunesse" painting competition. He also received the Sussman Foundation scholarship that year.

Kemal Seyhan's works were exhibited for the first time in Turkey at the "Öteki" exhibition in Istanbul in 1996. That same year, he won the Lower Austria State Art Award.

In 1999, he held his first solo exhibition in Vienna. In the following years, he held three more solo exhibitions in Vienna (2000) and Munich, Germany (2001 and 2002). He also participated in group exhibitions such as "T-art" in Vienna in 2002 and "21st Century" in 2004.

The exhibition at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery is the artist's fourth solo exhibition and the first one held in Turkey. In the introduction written in the catalog for the exhibition, Levent Çalıkoğlu mentions that the artist boldly declares, "This is what I am. I am a surface that reflects nothing but myself, trying to explore and show the intrinsic limits of action with color!" Çalıkoğlu reflects on Kemal Seyhan's thoughts on what can be said about the flatness of the canvas, which Clement Greenberg declared as the final point of modernism.

According to Çalıkoğlu, Kemal Seyhan, among today's Austrian modern artists, sees the image as an inherent whole, does not attempt to replace and imitate possible objects and situations that create nature, and emphasizes that the image excludes everything in our minds and is itself. With this attitude, he moves beyond traditional painting art, focusing on issues of surface, space, emptiness, and color in modernism in the field of painting, and creates his own process of creation. Çalıkoğlu interprets Seyhan's works as carrying the tension of a strange integration moment where horizontal and vertical movements are stretched like a grid over the surface, and the spread of color resembles a coat of arms motif in the intersection between mental and action processes, where thought dissolves and action is dedicated to the image. He also points out that the painter stands in the void as a kind of liminal traveler between what he has accumulated and what he wants to create.

Kemal Seyhan's exhibition at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery can be visited from October 12th to November 25th.