01 january 2026, Flor Linckens
Kubilay Mert Ural: elusive beings with sharp edges
In the online exhibition ‘Untitled Drawings’ on GalleryViewer, Ellen de Bruijne Projects presents a new series of works on paper by Kubilay Mert Ural, in which his distinctive visual language and associative way of working are distilled to capture their essence. These unique works, each measuring 21 by 29.7 cm, are made using pencil, crayon and acrylic paint, and are priced at €350 excluding VAT. Within this modest format, the artist explores a charged world where the absurd, the grotesque and the intuitive come together in subtle tension.
The hybrid and amorphous beings that Mert Ural conjures up hover somewhere between human, animal and object, evoking feelings of unease and ambiguity. Raw and expressive, the figures appear unpolished and fragmented, at times mirrored or duplicated. They have no clear point of origin and seem to follow their own unfathomable rules. At first glance, they appear to come from a playful, childlike world of fantasy, but beneath that brightness hides something sharper: biting, disquieting and existential. Their bodies are distorted, their outlines frayed, their presence elusive. If their eyes are visible, they are often blank or averted. Mert Ural seems to be exploring the idea of unapproachability: the other is visible, yet remains fundamentally unreadable.
Although this exhibition focuses on his works on paper, Mert Ural’s practice spans multiple disciplines. He also produces paintings, sculptures, installations, performances and videos, often incorporating text or music. That multidisciplinarity resonates in the drawings, which feel like fragments of a larger narrative, part of a broader mental space.
In his work, Mert Ural examines how images can operate as responses to political and societal structures and underlying collective anxieties. The artist has a sharp eye for the fringes of society, and themes such as social inequality, power and consumerism form a recurring undercurrent in his work. These concerns are rarely made explicit but are nonetheless suggested. The resulting drawings, dreamlike and slightly uncanny, portray suppressed tension, alienation and longing, and engage with the friction between the familiar and the estranging, the everyday and the extraordinary, chaos and control. From this tension emerges an unexpected internal logic.
At first glance, the drawings may seem impulsive or spontaneous, yet they are carefully constructed. They are shaped by absurdism and instinct and appear to stem from the subconscious. Mert Ural works associatively, where each drawing is a snapshot within a continuous stream of images and impressions. He does not use image to explain, but rather to evoke something that often escapes language. By combining seemingly naïve forms with visual estrangement, he creates a language that resists easy interpretation but encourages viewers to linger just a little longer.
Kubilay Mert Ural was born in 1986 in Istanbul. He studied Management of Performing Arts at Bilgi University in Istanbul, followed by a master’s degree at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, where he continues to live and work. In 2017–2018, he was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten. His work has previously been shown at Framer Framed, Nieuw Dakota, 38CC, Huidenclub, Hotel Maria Kapel and KIT Düsseldorf.
