Alumnus Baris Gokturk '20 Unveils 'All Saints' at The Boiler

On May 1st, alumnus Baris Gokturk '20, who is currently a guest artist at the ELM Foundation, unveiled his monumental piece, All Saints, at The Boiler. 

The 28-foot-long piece is composed of image transfers, ink, acrylic, paper pulp, and other debris, all of which is woven into a piece of industrial netting to create a collage of images—all of them depicting dancers at block parties in 2020 New York. After a year in which it was imperative to remain apart from others, the figures in All Saints—some masked, some not—are jarringly close together, sometimes overlapping to stunning effect. 

According to The Elm Foundation's website, "When was the last time we were close together like that? In the summer of 2020, when New York was the global epicenter of COVID-19, in spite of the threat of contagion, in spite of fears of overwhelming the healthcare system, of infecting and possibly killing loved ones or neighbors...people took their single, precious, vulnerable bodies into the streets and brought them dangerously near to other bodies in protest because the inequality of death was intolerable. If Breonna Taylor could be shot in her bed by invading police, if Ahmaud Arbery could be run down, if a police officer could kneel for nine minutes on George Floyd's neck as he begged for air, death–and those who wield death in the name of the state—had to be confronted in the street." 

All Saints is both imposing and fragile, with portions of the piece sagging under its own weight and sections that are so thin as to be almost transparent. For Gokturk, the piece is intimately connected to his Fires_Riots series, "which tracks moments of social combustion at protests from Gezi to Baltimore." According to a statement on Gokturk's website, his work "deals with the double-edged potential of collective action in public spaces of protest that bring individual bodies together against the larger body-politic of state and its institutions...this power dynamic is explored in a research-based practice of collective texts, images, and anecdotes that are then projected onto the pictorial realm, in the form of layered surfaces of image-transfer, paint, and relief sculpture." 

During his time as guest artist at The Boiler, a massive industrial exhibition and work space, Gokturk considered public dance—especially in times of uncertainty–as an acknowledgement of life and death. All Saints is inspired by death dance pictures created during the bubonic plague and other historical depictions of town gatherings and dances that show the fine line between euphoria and hysteria at times of social crisis. 

All Saints will be available for viewing at the Boiler until June 6, 2021

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.