Şebnem Ceylan Art | Contemporary Abstract Artist

Şebnem CEYLAN

Born in 1988 in Ankara, Şebnem Ceylan is a contemporary abstract artist whose practice centers on emotional depth, inner tension, and the search for meaning. She graduated from Bilkent University’s Department of Communication and Design, a background that shaped her visual sensibility and interest in conceptual thinking.

Her early engagement with psychology and philosophy — combined with a lifelong sensitivity to color, movement, and nonverbal expression — led her to explore the hidden emotional structures within human experience. Over time, observing how unspoken or repressed emotions surface in subtle gestures and behaviors profoundly influenced her approach to painting.

Ceylan works predominantly with abstraction, gesture, and layered surfaces. Her technique often carries traces of action painting, where movement becomes both a release and a record. Rather than depicting recognizable forms, she focuses on the internal states that resist definition: mental noise, emotional residue, unresolved tensions, and the fragile spaces between clarity and uncertainty.

Her paintings function as visual reflections of psychological landscapes — not to illustrate them, but to evoke them. She creates works that allow viewers to confront their own interpretations, emotions, and inner questions.

Ceylan continues to produce works that engage with themes of introspection, perception, and the complexity of being human, exhibiting both in Turkey and internationally.

Artist Statement

My practice centers on the emotional and mental layers that shape the human experience.
Through contemporary abstract art, I explore internal conflict, unresolved tension and the ongoing pursuit of meaning. These states become visible through layered surfaces, gestural marks and abstract forms.

For me, abstraction is not a departure from meaning but a way of confronting it.
It allows what is unspoken, repressed or fragmented to surface — not as narrative, but as presence. Each painting carries traces of intensity; moments where emotion becomes movement and movement becomes a record of the inner state.

I invite the viewer into a space of their own reading.
Rather than offering answers, I create a visual field where instinct, memory and perception can speak.
In this sense, my work becomes a place where meaning takes shape in abstraction.

Artist Biography

Born in 1988 in Ankara, Şebnem Ceylan is a contemporary abstract artist whose work engages with emotional depth, psychological tension and the search for meaning. She graduated from Bilkent University’s Department of Communication and Design, a foundation that shaped her conceptual thinking and visual approach.

Her long-standing interest in psychology and philosophy, combined with a heightened sensitivity to color, movement and nonverbal expression, led her to examine the hidden emotional structures within human behavior. Understanding how repressed emotions manifest in subtle gestures and patterns deeply influenced her artistic process.

Working primarily with abstraction, layered textures and gestural expression, Ceylan transforms internal states into visual form. Rooted in contemporary abstract art, her practice examines the fractured, unresolved and complex aspects of the human experience.

She continues to produce and exhibit work both in Turkey and internationally, focusing on themes of introspection, perception and the emotional landscapes that shape our inner world.