The History of Painting Is Too Heavy to Ignore: A Conversation with Artist Murat Önen

 Murat Önen at his studio in Düsseldorf, 2026.

By SELIN TAMTEKIN February 22nd, 2026

Connected across Düsseldorf and London via a video call, Murat Önen and I discuss his exhibition at Öktem Aykut Gallery in Istanbul, a few weeks before it opens. It is his first in the city since leaving for Germany in 2012.

Behind him, I can see new works on paper clipped to the wall.

“Rather than centering around a particular concept, it will be more of an introductory exhibition,” Önen explains. A rising figure on the German art scene, he has had solo exhibitions across Germany—most notably at the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein in Aachen, a leading contemporary art institution—and elsewhere in Europe, and is represented by Galerie Max Mayer in Berlin. Yet his work remains little known in Turkey.

He lifts a photocopy of a self-portrait he drew at thirteen towards the screen, made when he was living with his family in Bayrampaşa, a working-class, industrial neighborhood of Istanbul. The original drawing remains in his parents’ home. Önen plans to include the piece as a parenthetical aside within the exhibition—a poignant reference to where his artistic journey first began.

“I want to create a kind of mise en scène with it in a separate section of the gallery. I’m thinking of an installation where the drawing is spotlit on its own, near a bed. As you know, the bed often features in my paintings. The installation will also include an audio recording of a man snoring,” he says.

 Murat Önen, Untitled (Self-Portrait), 2005–06, Pencil on paper, 35 × 50 cm. Courtesy of Öktem Aykut. 

We turn to the very beginning of his art education. Önen describes the boarding fine arts high school he attended in Istanbul as having a culturally rich atmosphere, fostered by left-leaning, open-minded teachers who would gather students to watch Haneke and Tarkovsky films at night. Yet the curriculum itself was traditional, if not outdated, rooted in still-life drawing and reproductions of Old Master paintings in pencil.

It was around then that the idea of moving to Germany to study fine art at an academic level started to take shape in his mind.

“You are being educated in European art history, and soon you realize that all the painters you learn about are not from Istanbul,” he says. He adds that his growing awareness of being gay also played an important part in his decision.

Throughout our interview, Önen speaks with such intensity that I sometimes struggle to keep up, especially when the video call slips slightly out of sync. It therefore comes as no surprise when he tells me that, in order to reach the required level of German as quickly as possible, he spent a year taking both beginner and intermediate classes every weekend.

However, when Önen finally achieved his goal, arrived in Germany, and began his studies at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, he initially struggled with the level of creative freedom he was given.  “In the classroom, you are allocated a small space and they expect you to use your initiative, whereas until then I had always been told what to do. Besides, what do you have to draw on at that age?” he reflects.

Murat Önen, Observing Gradually, 2025. Oil on paper, 65 × 50 cm. Studio view. Courtesy of Öktem Aykut.

The distractions of Berlin’s vibrant gay club scene, within easy reach of Dresden, were not helpful either. After completing his five-year degree there, Önen realized he had been too young to make the most of it. Eager to deepen his practice, he pursued a second degree at the renowned Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, during which he developed his Haystacks series (2021–2023) and began taking part in both group and solo exhibitions.

Haystacks, installation view, DUVE, Berlin, 2022. Photo: Nick Ash

At first glance, the dense entanglement of muscular male bodies might be mistaken for something sexually suggestive, and Önen admits that he deliberately engages with this assumption. As a gay painter, he is aware that viewers often expect this from his work. Yet the Haystacks ultimately stem from a sense of chaos and entrapment triggered by the pressure to conform to body ideals, pressures that are especially pronounced in the gay club scene.

Murat Önen, Transition, 2025, Oil on linen, 140 × 130 cm. Courtesy of Öktem Aykut.
 

“I play with the tension between idealizing that body image and simultaneously finding it too toxic and superficial,” he says.

At the same time, as an artist who develops his work primarily through instinct and improvisation, the Haystacks provided him with a stable framework he could explore pictorially.

For Önen, one of the primary benefits of studying at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts was that it allowed him to move beyond the classical approach indoctrinated into him in Istanbul, where excessive attention to detail and craftsmanship were prioritized. Yet he acknowledges that his relationship to painting still comes from a traditional place.

“On the one hand, I make use of it; on the other, I reject it. It’s also something I don’t want to lose entirely,” he says.

This internal conflict forms the backbone of many of his compositions. In one of the new works exhibited in Istanbul, Observing Gradually, a relatively classically rendered male figure is juxtaposed with a close-up of the painter’s own face, seen from a horizontal angle, while beneath him, in loose, turbulent brushstrokes, a second, barely legible face begins to emerge. This shadow self, or doppelgänger, is a recurring motif, as is the artist in bed—an image often tinged with quiet melancholia that adds a significant emotional layer to his work.

Both motifs reappear in Painter’s Room. This time, Önen recasts one of Sargent’s puppeteers from Marionettes (1903) in his own image—“the painter”—while his other self lies in bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling. The puppeteer is a figure Önen has returned to before.

Murat Önen, Painter’s Room, 2025, Oil on linen, 100 x 70 cm, Courtesy of Öktem Aykut.
 

When I mention his referencing of painters such as John Singer Sargent, Diego Velázquez, among others, Önen says:

“Artists have always studied one another. Goya studied Velázquez, and later someone else comes along and studies Goya. I position myself within that lineage too, because in a way I’m continuing what they began. The history of painting is too heavy to ignore. You can’t just say, ‘Here I am, I paint,’ and leave it at that; you have to somehow place yourself in relation to it. But that relationship develops very organically. One day you open a book, something catches your eye, you take it. I also regard art history as a kind of toolbox.”

 Doing the Work, installation view, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, 2023. Photo: Kai Werner Schmidt.

Another recent fascination is abstraction. Önen boldly continues to merge these influences with autobiographical moments drawn from his everyday life, yet it is his expressive handling of paint that most profoundly animates his work. When I point this out to the artist, he responds:

“What makes a painting truly a painting, what sets it apart from a photograph or from an illustration, is precisely that. Oil paint has this very special effect. It’s very luminous, very organic, very alive.”

As we come to the end of our virtual meeting, Önen speaks of a desire to slow down:

“When you’re always in a rush to catch up, you can’t really try new things. The last two years have been like that, always moving on to the next. This exhibition in Istanbul feels like a closing chapter for me. I want to say goodbye to the approach I’ve been working with and move on to something new. I’m saving that for Berlin,” he adds, referring to his fall exhibition at Galerie Max Mayer.

Murat Önen: Resim Başka Sen Başka is on view at Öktem Aykut, Istanbul, until March 28th, 2026.