Alumni Spotlight: Baris Gokturk ’20

November 12, 2024

The Alumni Spotlight is a place to hear from the School of the Arts alumni community about their journeys as artists and creators.

Baris Gokturk ’20 is a Turkish multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He reconstructs historical documents, photographs and archival imagery about events or individuals acting within, or reacting against, dominant paradigms of power in three-dimensional layers, hybrid fragments and site-specific installations that oscillate between drawing, painting and sculpture. Baris is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program in sculpture and Hunter College's MFA program in painting. He was an ApexArt fellow in Seoul, artist-in-residence at YADDO, LMCC and ISCP, a participant in SOMA Mexico and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture as well as a fellow at NXTHVN. His solo exhibitions Public Secret (2020) and Scanner/Tarayan (2023) were on view at Helena Anrather Gallery in New York and Galeri Bosfor in Istanbul. His work has been featured in ArtForum, BOMB Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail among others. Recent museum projects and exhibitions include SECCA in Winston-Salem, The Jewish Museum in New York, The Frost Art Museum in Miami, and Pera Museum in Istanbul. He completed public commissions by Columbia University’s Butler Library and The Public Art Fund in New York. Baris is the co-founder of Junte, an arts, land and culture project in Puerto Rico, that is being incubated as part of The New Museum’s NEW INC. program in social architecture.

 

Was there a specific faculty member or peer who especially inspired you while at the School of the Arts? If so, who and how?

I was very lucky to be surrounded by amazing faculty during my studies but what got me there in the first place was the chance to work with Jon Kessler in particular. I had always loved his work but I had no idea he was also a great teacher and a great soul. The Palace at 4 A.M, his show at PS1 from 2005 remains one of the best shows I have ever seen. In addition to Jon, I have been truly mentored by Tomas Vu Daniel and Marc Dion at SOA as well as Zeynep Celik at the department of history and Michael Taussig in anthropology. I could go on and on, there are simply too many faculty and peers worth mentioning.

 

How did attending the School of the Arts impact your work and career as an artist?

Even though my time there came to an abrupt and painful end due to COVID, attending the school had a big impact on my work and career. Getting my second MFA in my mid-thirties allowed me to be alert on opportunities that the school provided. The program also gave me the confidence to come up with seemingly audacious, hard to realize projects and go out in the real world and pitch them to the people and places with means to accommodate them.

 

What was your favorite or most memorable class while at the School of the Arts?

Michael Taussig’s Mastery of Non-Mastery was a big influence on me. The Making and Knowing Project led by Pamela Smith during which we studied and reconstructed recipes from a sixteenth century French artisan book was well beyond the standard definition of a class. For both classes, I wrote long letters of interest just to be admitted in. In the end, I was overwhelmed but it was well worth it.

 

What were the first steps you took after graduating?

The first steps were tough. I’m a member of the class of 2020 which means the school shut down around March because of COVID just as we were starting to get ready for our thesis exhibition. I had some luck, had a solo show offer from a gallery I already loved in New York, and another large scale commission from a community I ended up loving. Those things kept me going.

 

What advice would you give to recent graduates? 

Treat the first couple of years out of grad school as part of school. By that I mean maintain and continue to grow the relationships you started while at school. Maybe stick around in New York a little longer to cultivate further what you started in the program.