In a city alive with the hum of contemporary art, Sefa Çakır’s latest exhibition, “I Closed the Door from the Outside,” refuses the casual eye. There are no easy pleasures here, no glimmering optimism to distract the viewer. Instead, the show immerses audiences in a world of unease, where youth, abandonment and quiet resilience dominate the frame.
“Artists generally hold a lexicon and grammar close, keeping their practice, their systems, methodologies and aesthetic habits, as discreet and nuanced as possible,” writes Gary Sangster, describing the typical restraint of contemporary visual artists.
Çakır, he notes, does not do that here. In this exhibition, which has opened at Vision Art Platform in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district, he is “demonstrably precise and specific in making images that can caution, evoke, and resonate in ways that are both thoughtful and compelling.”
The sense, Sangster continues, is that “the state of the world is not exactly right, and that the young are in a tight spot.”
Sefa Çakır’s work is on display in the “I Closed the Door from the Outside” exhibition at the Vision Art Platform in the Beşiktaş district of Istanbul, Türkiye, Nov. 20, 2025. (Photo Courtesy of Vision Art Platform)
Children appear frequently in Çakır’s images, their faces defiant or contemplative, often framed with an intensity that feels almost confrontational. Young mothers clutch infants; decrepit wooden houses loom like memories of forgotten lives; gigantic bees float in uncanny suspension. Sangster highlights the artist’s signature style: “a form of rendering in marker that might be described as organic pixilation, which creates a kind of vibrating, enlivened surface to his portraiture and an animated texture to the imagery.”
A work by Sefa Çakır is on display in the “I Closed the Door from the Outside” exhibition at the Vision Art Platform in the Beşiktaş district of Istanbul, Türkiye, Nov. 20, 2025. (Photo Courtesy of Vision Art Platform)
Traditional figure-ground conventions are often ignored. Many portraits float against seamless, shadowed backgrounds reminiscent of photographic studio work, while a few landscapes replace the void with frenetic, darkly rendered skies.
“These kinds of subdued presentation compound the sense of seclusion or the somewhat abject resignation of his subjects,” Sangster observes. In landscapes, the skies are almost always cloudless, dull gray, imbuing the world with a sense of something lost, something absent.
Yet there is poetry here. Though the events and experiences that shaped each moment remain unseen, Sangster writes, “These images are the result of experiences, of people or places, that are otherwise unknowable or invisible to the audience.”
Some works employ extreme close-ups, focusing tightly on faces that return the viewer’s gaze with a fixed intensity. In these moments, the artist functions almost as a documentarian, but one who cedes control to his subjects.
“He is permitting the subject to control the observational space, which submerges the artist’s viewpoint, their invisible control, and places the subject in a near direct dialogue with the viewer,” Sangster explains.
Buildings, too, are treated with reverence and melancholy. Often depicted as abandoned or decaying, they serve as silent witnesses to human lives. Children who inhabit these spaces sometimes look elsewhere, their attention captured by events outside the frame, reinforcing a sense of narrative that extends beyond the visible. Sangster notes one striking example: “In one work, two children hold hands, but look away from each other, their expressions resigned. Here, black-and-white figures against a blood-red background. In another, two children are celebrating their candy canes before an old barn-like environment, the colour coding reversed, with blood red figures and a black and white ground.”
Sefa Çakır’s works are on display in the “I Closed the Door from the Outside” exhibition at the Vision Art Platform in the Beşiktaş district of Istanbul, Türkiye, Nov. 20, 2025. (Photo Courtesy of Vision Art Platform)
And then there is the bee. Oversized, surreal, and repeated across the exhibition, it hovers between menace and benevolence. Sangster offers its interpretation: “Pollination underpins the web of life, helping crops produce food and helping flowers produce seeds.” The bee could carry multiple meanings, but at this scale, “it seems unthreatening, friendly even, and a portent of possibility.”
In “I Closed the Door from the Outside,” Çakır offers viewers something rare: “an inside look at his concerns and how those concerns are developed and articulated through a careful and precise range of visualizing techniques.” Through his precise drawing technique, choice of subdued color, and inventive perspectives, he conjures spaces where the viewer is both observer and participant, confronted by the weight of unseen histories, human resilience, and the subtle poetry of everyday unease.
For those willing to linger, the exhibition rewards with intimacy and reflection. As Sangster writes, Çakır does not merely depict unease; “he renders it, with all its textures, its ambiguities, and its unexpected intimacies.”
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