Not the form —
the light that
falls across it.
I work the surface of clay the way a draughtsman works a page: with shadow, contrast, and the slow turn of light. Pieces begin in drawing and end in relief, where a real shadow does what a pencil only suggests.
Clay as a drawing surface.
I’m Selim Kır, a ceramic artist and graphic designer working between Istanbul and Athens.
I worked as a graphic designer for years. That is where I learned to build light, shadow and contrast on a flat surface. After a while I no longer wanted to leave it on paper. I was looking for a place where the shadow is real and shifts as the viewer moves around it. I found that place in clay.
One Ceramic started in 2014. Greek mythology runs through most of my work, because these stories still say something after being told for thousands of years. In each piece I reinterpret a god or a myth in the language of my own hand and of this land.
- Practice
- Ceramic relief, drawing
- Based
- Istanbul & Athens
- Themes
- Light, shadow, mythology
Kıvrım / Fold
A series about light and shadow rather than form. Each piece is folded by hand so its surface catches light along one edge and releases it along another. The work changes as you move around it.
Mythology in relief
Nefes / Breath
In this series I build the surface from thousands of small holes, opened one by one. The clay stays solid and whole while turning into something porous, a skin rather than a closed shell. These openings are what let the form breathe, and that is where the series takes its name. I keep the form quiet and let all the movement live in the texture itself.
Su-Hayat / Water-Life
Water was the reason humans made their first vessels. Su-Hayat is a collection of hand-formed stoneware jugs that return to that oldest relationship between water and clay. Each one is made to hold both the movement and the stillness of water, turning the act of drinking into a small ritual.
Two cities, one practice.
The work moves between an Istanbul studio and a forthcoming atelier in Athens. Two light conditions, one continuous line of inquiry into how a surface holds shadow.