Baris Gokturk
Bio: Baris Gokturk was born in Ankara, Turkey. He was recently an ApexArt fellow in Seoul, artist-in-residence at YADDO, and a participant in SOMA Mexico as well as Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Recent museum exhibitions include Pera Museum in Istanbul and SECCA in Winston- Salem, NC. He recently completed a mural for Columbia University’s Butler Library and a commission by the Public Art Fund as part of Art on the Grid. He finished a residency at LMCC Governors Island in 2020, and his debut solo show in New York could be seen at Helena Anrather Gallery in November 2020. Gokturk is currently working on upcoming projects in New York, Venice, and Eskisehir, Turkey. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn.
Thesis Exhibition
Artist Statement: Each ideology engineers its own mythology. I am interested in the way ideology-driven aesthetics are adopted, or reacted against, by individuals as self-defining spiritual symbols.
I reconstruct two-dimensional historical documents, photographs and archival imagery about events or individuals overlooked by the mainstream history in three-dimensional layers, hybrid fragments and installations that oscillate between drawing, painting and sculpture. I rebuild the photographic image as a physical surface first and then peel it off as a displaced piece of skin that I reapply to other found or sculpted objects in relation to a specific event.
L to R: Glory of Commerce (detail), (72" x 84" x 84", Mixed media, polyurethane cement, clay, neon, wood, image transfer, 2021); Glory of Commerce (72" x 84" x 84", Mixed media, polyurethane cement, clay, neon, wood, image transfer, 2021); Untitled (Riot Fires 31), (66" x 56", Ink, acrylic, oil, and image transfer on linen, 2021); Untitled (Riot Fires 32), (66" x 56", Ink, acrylic, oil, and image transfer on linen, 2021)
