Barış Göktürk was born in Ankara, Turkey. A recent graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program (2020), Göktürk has been an ApexArt fellow in Seoul, South Korea, the artist-in-residence in multiple institutions In New York and abroad including ISCP, LMCC,YADDO, and SOMA Mexico, as well a participant at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
In his works, Barış Göktürk is interested in the way shape-shifting possibilities within the aesthetic language relate to potential for change in the political realm. He reconstructs two-dimensional historical documents, photographs and archival imagery about events or individuals acting within or re-acting against dominant paradigms of power in three-dimensional layers, hybrid fragments and installations that oscillate between drawing, painting and sculpture. He rebuilds the photographic image as a physical surface first and then peels it off as a displaced piece of skin that he reapplies to other found or sculpted objects in relation to a specific historic moment echoed in current events.
Baris Gokturk has exhibited work at ELM Foundation, Brooklyn; The Jewish Museum, New York; New Museum, New York; The Frost Museum, Miami; The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem; Pera Museum, Istanbul, among others.