Hazal Özgür’s “Phantasma” at Galeri Bosfor: Painting the Shadows of Istanbul Nights

Most of us walk home at night without looking down. Hazal Özgür looks down. On her nocturnal walks the painter watches her own shadow stretch across the pavement and dissolve into the shadows of trees, utility poles and things people have thrown away — and from those fleeting overlaps she has built “Phantasma,” her solo exhibition at Galeri Bosfor in Istanbul, on view from 15 October to 14 November 2026. It is a quiet, slow-burning painting show, and one of the more intriguing propositions in Karaköy this autumn.

Hazal Özgür’s Phantasma: from a night walk to a painting

The gallery’s press text describes a three-stage process that is worth spelling out, because it explains why the paintings look the way they do. First, Özgür photographs the shadows she encounters. Second, she makes physical collages from those photographs, and these collages set the basic architecture of each composition. Third, she paints — and here the method opens up. The paintings evolve through chance, experiment and repeated reworking of colour, composition and light. Large areas are painted over; forms sink back or rise to the surface. By the time a canvas is finished, it bears only a faint resemblance to the collage it began with.

That gradual erasure is the point. A shadow is already an image once removed from its object; a photograph of a shadow is removed again; a collage of photographs once more. Painting, in Özgür’s hands, is the final distancing step — and paradoxically the one that brings the experience back to the body, because it is slow, physical and full of decisions. The artist herself compares the act of working to walking through a pitch-dark tunnel with only a dim flashlight.

The “oceanic feeling”

Galeri Bosfor connects the project to Sigmund Freud’s notion of the “oceanic feeling”. Freud borrowed the phrase from the French writer Romain Rolland and discussed it at the opening of Civilization and Its Discontents (1930): a sensation of limitlessness, of the boundaries of the self dissolving into the world around it. It is an apt frame for shadows that merge. When your silhouette fuses with a lamppost on the pavement, where exactly do you end? Özgür’s paintings are described as psychological dreamscapes moving between reality and imagination — images in which the self is not a fixed figure but something porous and shifting.

Who is Hazal Özgür?

“Phantasma” is Özgür’s third solo exhibition, and according to the gallery the project grew out of her MFA thesis. That academic origin shows in the rigour of the method, but the work is not illustrative of theory: the press text stresses experiment, accident and long reworking. Visitors who want to know more about her training and earlier shows should ask the gallery directly, as a detailed biography has not been published alongside the exhibition.

Why shadows matter to painters

Shadows have a long history in painting — from the ancient story of the Corinthian maiden tracing her lover’s silhouette on a wall, often told as the mythical origin of drawing, to the long, theatrical shadows of Giorgio de Chirico’s metaphysical piazzas. What makes Özgür’s approach contemporary is the photographic and collage stage in between. She does not paint shadows from life, nor does she simply copy photographs; she uses the camera and scissors to build a structure, then dismantles that structure with paint. For painters, the show is a useful case study in how a rigorous starting system can liberate, rather than restrict, intuitive decisions at the easel.

Galeri Bosfor and the Karaköy scene

Galeri Bosfor sits on Kölemen Sokak in Karaköy, a neighbourhood that has become one of Istanbul’s densest gallery districts, within walking distance of Galata and the Bosphorus waterfront. A show about night walks and urban shadows feels at home in these streets of old warehouses and narrow lanes, where the light changes dramatically between day and evening. Pair a visit with other galleries in Karaköy and Tophane for an afternoon of contemporary art.

Who should see it

• Painters interested in process: the photograph–collage–painting sequence is a clear, transferable method.
• Collectors following emerging Turkish painters: a third solo show is often the moment an artist’s language becomes recognisably their own.
• Anyone who has felt their reflection or shadow become strange on a city street at night.

Visiting information

Galeri Bosfor, Kemankeş Karamustafa Paşa Mahallesi, Kölemen Sokak No:7, Karaköy, Beyoğlu, İstanbul. 15 October – 14 November 2026. Phone +90 552 351 09 50, email [email protected]. Opening hours are not published online, so please check with the gallery before visiting. See the official exhibition page, our Phantasma listing for full details, and Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries for more shows in Istanbul and beyond.