Bedri Baykam “I Live in Painting”

The exhibition “I Live in Painting” is presented as a special selection of Bedri Baykam’s recent works from the 4D period 2007 to 2009 and from 2009 to 2015. The works of the artist, which appear as a continuation of a historical process, differ technically. In the period between 2007 and 2009, the artist adds the time factor in addition to 3 dimensions in his works produced with 4D technology. These works, in which 25-30 layers are superimposed on each other, contain references to the artist’s favorite themes such as eroticism, Istanbul, art history and pop culture. This period of Bedri Baykam, who brought a very different perspective and a new technique to contemporary art, is very important in his artistic process.

In his recent works, the artist returns to the canvas surface again. Apart from painting on canvas, the metaphors and political references he creates with collages are the continuation of the works he produced in the previous years.

Bedri Baykam said, “Through a visual perception that has grown by his own means and now establishes his own iconology, he is both digging into his own past, rereading art historical information, and showing that painting is still a potential world of images. The relationship that different phases of his art can establish with new areas of visual expression is clear and clear. The material and the ability to transform the current meanings it points to are so embedded in the iconology it has accumulated so far that every new image preserves its timelessness. Bedri transforms the tension created by the encounter between the past and the present into a visual vitality with a clever maneuver. It gently feeds the visual alphabet in its iconology into the intellectual and pictorial infrastructure of the last two years of production. Each new painting explores the current world counterpart of the signs in his art.

Bedri Baykam’s solo exhibition titled “I Live in Painting” can be viewed at Art Suites Gallery Bodrum between July 5 – September 4, 2016.