Technology is limited, absurd is limitless.

"Handology #1"
13 seconds
4096 x 2560

Born in Turkey in 1982, Alkan Avcıoğlu is a polymath and an outsider AI artist who believes in the transformative power of prolific creation. A relentless, multifaceted experimenter, he began digital painting as early as 1999 and recently became a Fellowship artist.

Handology #1

Technology is limited, absurd is limitless.

"Handology #3"
18 seconds
4000 x 2500

Handology #3

Simulacrum #9

*Manufactured Transcendence* provokes a confrontation with the new age of spiritualism, offering no easy answers. The works create a paradoxical view of modern expectations in this realm, blurring the lines between past and present, superficial and revelatory, devout and detached. Each artwork is a web of allegorical intricacies and carefully crafted dissonance that compels an investigation into the motives and authenticity of its subjects. 


The detailed works in this series invite us to explore the rich and often contradictory landscapes of contemporary spirituality, in an age dominated by consumerism, hedonism, and superficiality. Each piece features the complex visual approach common to Avcıoğlu's work, merging elaborate and expansive multilayered scenes that challenge the viewer's perception of spirituality’s intimacy. The implied stories within each artwork therefore function as visual riddles where the sacred and the commodified collide, challenging the viewer to untangle the strands of genuine faith from the convenient tapestry of mass-produced belief. 


*Manufactured Transcendence* ultimately explores spiritual commodification both as a modern phenomenon, and as a continuation of the historical patterns in religious practices that remain susceptible to cultural and economic forces. This context deepens the critique within this series on the commercial and mass-produced qualities that seem to persist around spiritual practices intended as a means of true transcendence.


Manufactured Transcendence #15

"The burnout society thrives on the illusion of progress, masking the true cost of human well-being."
Byung-Chul Han

16000 x 10667 pixels

The Burnout Society

In a world where 10 billion screens outnumber people, entire cultures are shifting from producing goods to fabricating content for others to consume. We have unwittingly become workers in this giant factory, endlessly manufacturing and consuming the digital realities that entrap us. 

*All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace*, the new collection by Alkan Avcıoğlu, critiques the dehumanizing effects of technology by portraying how we are drowning in screens. The series blurs the lines between user and producer, freedom and enslavement – creating a world that is plausible yet doesn't make sense, mirroring the chaotic absurdity of the post-truth era.

Taking its title from the 1967 Richard Brautigan poem (later used by Adam Curtis' docuseries), the collection evokes the scale and orderliness of mass production by revisiting the visual language of industrial photography and artists such as Burtynsky and Gursky, creating an allegorical update for an era dominated by data and screens. By transforming the digital consumer into a factory worker, the collection metaphorically depicts this new form of secret labor that merges creation and consumption. Each piece underscores how technology, rather than liberating us, has become a tool for control and entrapment.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace #23

Technology is limited, absurd is limitless.

"Handology #2"
18 seconds
3840 x 2560

Born in Turkey in 1982, Alkan Avcıoğlu is a polymath and an outsider AI artist who believes in the transformative power of prolific creation. A relentless, multifaceted experimenter, he began digital painting as early as 1999 and recently became a Fellowship artist. His works have been selected for numerous exhibitions including Paris Photo, Photo Vogue Festival 2023.

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