| Like an endless labyrinth erratically winding and pushing towards new directions with no conclusive destination, Turkish artist Bedri Baykam transcends artistic progression. Developmental patterns do not exist within the artist’s prolific career; for Baykam resides in a world laden with gray, an environment in which x is y, and the very notion of dichotomies collapses to ultimately compose compellingly expressive and audacious art. Indeed, to truly understand Baykam is to at once perceive him as a perpetual rebel, an individual who seems to effortlessly refuse the confining definitions and simplifications that we, as human beings, are inherently disposed to designate. |
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Bedri Baykam – Sarah Masel
Like an endless labyrinth erratically winding and pushing towards new directions with no conclusive destination, Turkish artist Bedri Baykam transcends artistic progression. Developmental patterns do not exist within the artist’s prolific career; for Baykam resides in a world laden with gray, an environment in which x is y, and the very notion of dichotomies collapses to ultimately compose compellingly expressive and audacious art. Indeed, to truly understand Baykam is to at once perceive him as a perpetual rebel, an individual who seems to effortlessly refuse the confining definitions and simplifications that we, as human beings, are inherently disposed to designate. Experimenting with painting, drawing, performance art, installations, photography, collage and even graffiti, the artist, who is also a political activist, notable writer—Baykam published a 1,300 page autobiography, as well as a fictional novel that has very surprisingly predicted the attacks of 9/11 in its full details, titled The Bone—and art scholar, continually surprises.
Baykam, who was born in 1957 in Akara, Turkey, actually began his artistic career at the mere age of two. “Overall cowboy war-scenes and horses influenced me a lot in movies and cartoons, and I wanted to recreate my version of them, showing their speed and action in my world; it was another form of playing for me,” explained Baykam in a recent interview. Deemed a child prodigy by his country and the art community at large, Baykam had his first major exhibition at the age of six. Although he persisted in his artistic ambitions throughout his childhood—mostly in the form of black and white drawings and paintings—the artist focused less on such endeavors during his teenage years.
At the age of 21, however, Baykam returned to art only to begin the never-ending process of digressing from his already acclaimed status as an artist. It was also during this year that Baykam moved to Paris where he not only received an MBA from Sorbonne, but, more importantly, created what he now refers to as “The Paris Years.” With charcoal or China ink, Baykam drew and painted nudes and abstract Parisian scenes with a fluidity that evokes a young Matisse softly treading the distinct boundary between figurative and abstractive genius.
Yet, just when Baykam’s work starts to appear familiar and stylistically characterized, he somehow shifts and transforms to establish himself as an entirely different artist. “When I decided to go to California and live an artist’s life only, then it was time for an explosion of size and colors, starting in 1980,” said Baykam. To be sure, it was throughout his education at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland that Baykam began exploring the nature of aesthetics—enlivening his canvases with color, texture and varying media in their purest form. Hidden beneath such simplicities, however, laid an obsessive, complicated desire to transcribe personal contemplations into art and thus, what may at first materialize as plainly beautiful eventually deviates to construct an intricately woven narrative with richly dark undertones.
Struggles with intimacy, existential thought and international recognition are the foundations upon which Baykam conceives his works within the period, “The California Years.” In fact, it was during his last year in California, 1987, that Baykam first truly distinguished himself as an artist who pushed conventions and challenged the conformities that critics and spectators so willingly imposed upon his work. If anything, This Has Been Done Before—a piece consisting of graffiti on white canvas—declares the culmination, maturation and liberation of an artist who will forever remain unhindered by societal standards of art. Baykam elaborates: “I want my art to be free, and in my first ‘adult’ art manifesto I wrote in 1983—some 25 years ago—I said, ‘I want to be recognized by my attitude towards art and not the mere repetition of a stereotypical same image, as a trademark of the artist.’”
It was at this very moment—a defining instant after which falling comfortably into an artistic role seemed all too inevitable—that Baykam once again demanded something else and something more of himself, so as to incite a completely new artistic beginning. Just when Baykam started to make waves in the American contemporary art world, he decided to return to Istanbul, a homecoming that would drive the artist towards a new objective: to fuse the artistic with the political only to redefine both and revolutionize the ways in which such matters were grasped.
Shortly after his arrival, Baykam believed that a shift towards Islamic fundamentalism was just beginning to proliferate throughout Turkey. In response to these disturbing observations, the artist embarked upon different media that would more potently express the urgency of his fears that his country would soon be divided by corrupt politics and religious extremists. For instance, The Box of Democracy, The Sin Room or Kubilay’s Room—a reference to a Turkish officer killed by the military in 1930, named Kubilary—were the titles of installations Baykam presented in the first Istanbul Biennial in 1987.
With the passing years though, Baykam realized that art was just not enough. “I started giving political speeches all over the country, writing political articles and working in recently formed democratic political associations with other people seeing the danger,” he explained. Compelled to such a degree, Baykam not only held a position in the Republican People’s Party, but also ran for the Turkish presidency. Regardless of Baykam’s new direction in politics, the artist maintained his position as a link within the intersection between both the art and political worlds within which he was so firmly situated. He elucidates: “My political struggle—before all else—is to preserve all freedoms in Turkey, all art and freedom to produce it and fight against war and racism—has influenced my art positively and has expanded its borders.” This philosophy is grounded in the very exhibitions and works that were inspired by this turbulent political environment, such as a show in which the 60s revolution against the previously fascist government was spotlighted.
In more recent years, Baykam’s work has departed from the political and galvanized an individual artistic movement towards the personal through its analysis of past style and periods in the context of past memories. What the artist describes as a “constant search” becomes the raw footage of our most primitive selves; it is, in other words, the eternal fixation of and hunt for the sexual and, what’s more, intimacy. “Inner Traces,” for example, is a series involving black and white photography that are derived from the artist’s own life. Inspired by an elusive relationship Baykam has maintained since the age of 15, “Inner Traces,” as well as his other more contemporary series, therefore reflects upon that which is concurrently individualistic and universal. “I do not consider sex dirty or bad,” he states, “It is a gift of life. I have always put women or a woman in the center of my life, as many creative people do.”
Aside from preparing for a new book that will seek to dissect what Baykam views as false democratic claims of the Islamist party, the artist will be exhibiting in Istanbul and the Piramid Art Center, a venue he founded last year. Baykam will subsequently have a show in New York, at Mac Art in Istanbul and in Monaco. Despite Baykam’s global ubiquity within the upcoming year, he sustains his metamorphic identity. “Just come to my posthumous retrospective in 2057 on my 100th birthday and check for yourself,” he proclaimed.
