Working across painting, sculpture, ceramics, and installation, he combines classical techniques with digital processes such as printmaking and silkscreen. His practice engages with materials and visual languages drawn from fashion, street culture, and modern art history, often transforming everyday objects into sculptural forms. Central to his work is an exploration of tension, contrast, and ambivalence - particularly at the threshold where distinctions between design and art begin to blur.
Themes of diaspora, pragmatism, and street culture inform his approach, while his Turkish-Kurdish and German background as a post migrant, shapes his perspective on cultural diversity and informs his desire to create connections between different contexts.
Zafer Urun (b. 1999, Schrobenhausen, Germany) lives and works in Munich, Germany. He began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich under a special talent admission with Markus Oehlen and will graduate in 2026 under the supervision of Schirin Kretschmann. His education has been shaped by an interdisciplinary approach, complemented by parallel studies in industrial design to expand perspectives emerging from his artistic practice. This interest led him to join Tobias Rehberger’s class, initially as a guest student and later on a full-time basis, drawn by the proximity of his work to his own concerns. Most recently, he completed a Fulbright scholarship in the MFA program at California State University, Long Beach in Los Angeles, where he also worked as a Teaching Assistant for Katie Grinnan.

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