Baris Gokturk
Brooklyn, NY
ARTIST STATEMENT
“You can
hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are
free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back
is the one suffering you could avoid.” Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms 104
I have been working on a series with the idea of protest fire as a simultaneous act of destruction and hope for change. I have been looking into street fires started during different protests around the globe for the destructive yet regenerative abilities of popular uprisings and how that dual capability can be paralleled in the plastic language of painting, as well as in the mechanics and philosophies of image-making in art.
I have been working on a series with the idea of protest fire as a simultaneous act of destruction and hope for change. I have been looking into street fires started during different protests around the globe for the destructive yet regenerative abilities of popular uprisings and how that dual capability can be paralleled in the plastic language of painting, as well as in the mechanics and philosophies of image-making in art.
BIO
Baris Gokturk is a Turkish artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He is currently an MFA candidate in sculpture at Columbia University. He also holds an MFA in painting from Hunter College where he taught for seven years. He currently teaches at John Hopkins University and Pace University. He has shown his work internationally in the US, Germany, Spain, France, Korea, Turkey and Puerto Rico. Recent exhibitions include Pera Museum in Istanbul and Spring-Break Art Show in New York. Gokturk recently was an ApexArt fellow in Seoul, Korea, artist-in-resident at YADDO, LMCC, Millay Colony and a participant in SOMA Mexico as well as Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.