Photo: Nano Lopez

Efkan (1990, Kassel), Oemer (1993, Kassel) are an artist-duo based in Germany

Efkan & Oemer explore contemporary culture through a practice shaped by structure and material presence. They translate what they see in their surroundings and street-influenced aesthetics into a distinct language. Their work developed over time through a shared desire to express how culture appears visually.

Both keep an open approach, allowing each work to shift during its development. Their use of mixed media combining acrylic, spray paint, lacquer, markers, drawing and objects allows them to build layers that a single medium could not achieve.

Typography plays an important role. For the duo, typographic gestures act as personal markers, as individual as handwriting and as specific as a fingerprint. By looking at how letters function as form and structure, they challenge common ideas of readability and meaning, treating text as a visual element rather than just a carrier of information.

Skate culture appears in their works not as a motif, but through the materials themselves. Used skateboard decks, marked by movement, are approached as records of lived experience. These surfaces bring questions of use, value and cultural memory into the work.

Through this approach, Efkan & Oemer develop a language that moves away from polished aesthetics and instead focuses on what feels real: the worn, the direct and the unrefined.