CATALOGUES
2017 Jardin Particulier,
French Palace, Istanbul, Turkey
October 24-29
Zilberman Gallery, İstanbul, Turkey
February 18 - April 30
2014 A Carriage Affair,
Galeri Zilberman, İstanbul, Turkey
May 10 - June 21
2011 Cabinet of Curiosities ,
Cda-Projects, İstanbul, Turkey
May 14 - June 14
CATALOGUES
2017 Jardin Particulier,
French Palace, Istanbul, Turkey
October 24-29
Zilberman Gallery, İstanbul, Turkey
February 18 - April 30
2014 A Carriage Affair,
Galeri Zilberman, İstanbul, Turkey
May 10 - June 21
2011 Cabinet of Curiosities ,
Cda-Projects, İstanbul, Turkey
May 14 - June 14
CATALOGUES
2017 Jardin Particulier,
French Palace, Istanbul, Turkey
October 24-29
Zilberman Gallery, İstanbul, Turkey
February 18 - April 30
2014 A Carriage Affair,
Galeri Zilberman, İstanbul, Turkey
May 10 - June 21
2011 Cabinet of Curiosities ,
Cda-Projects, İstanbul, Turkey
May 14 - June 14
CATALOGUES
2017 Jardin Particulier,
French Palace, Istanbul, Turkey
October 24-29
Zilberman Gallery, İstanbul, Turkey
February 18 - April 30
2014 A Carriage Affair,
Galeri Zilberman, İstanbul, Turkey
May 10 - June 21
2011 Cabinet of Curiosities ,
Cda-Projects, İstanbul, Turkey
May 14 - June 14
CATALOGUES
2017 Jardin Particulier,
French Palace, Istanbul, Turkey
October 24-29
Zilberman Gallery, İstanbul, Turkey
February 18 - April 30
2014 A Carriage Affair,
Galeri Zilberman, İstanbul, Turkey
May 10 - June 21
2011 Cabinet of Curiosities ,
Cda-Projects, İstanbul, Turkey
May 14 - June 14
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2017
2014
Yeryüzünde Minör Titreşimler
2023
Unleashing, 2018
Jardin Particulier, 2017
Follower, 2017
CURATORIAL EXHIBITIONS
2011
Erinnerungen An
Die Fremde, 2011
OTHER WORKS
The Avatar series, which re-evaluates time and space with a longing for rooting; looks closely to the ground, what grows from there, and processes it again; goes deep from where the body stands and explores new knowledge and interests between the roots of life. Avatar - Istanbul Root, was formed with Istanbul’s flora; including roses, redbuds, and wisteria, collected by the artist herself from various parks of the city. The shadows of all these Istanbul-based plants that came under her perspective settled into her own shadow.
Inspired by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s novel “Teslim” (Surrender), the artist focuses on the relationship between root and body through the city where she lives and works: Istanbul. Delving into the individual’s curious bond with the flora, Bingöl’s silhouette echoes within Tanpınar’s narrative as the root calls for the body.
Avatar: Istanbul Root:
Living Inside a Tale and There Only, 2022
Glazed ceramics, 200x90x1.5 cm
detail
detail
Avatar: Istanbul Root - Surrender, 2022
Glazed ceramics, 200x95x1.5 cm
Above Mentioned Tiles is based on a precise projection of the grouts in between the çini tiles on a wall at the Harem section of the Topkapı Palace. Recreating the grout body that holds the pieces together -rather than the pieces themselves, the work points out İznik tiles’ tessellated spatial aspect.
Although they are made in an attempt to appear seamless, the grout that holds the tiles together – at times as thin as to be unnoticeable, at times as wide as to creep into the tiles - gives their fragmented structure away. Bingöl takes on the form of these grouts as a way to accentuate the seams that are often overlooked while seeking perfection.
The çini panels of the Topkapı Palace are an architectural manifestation of ceramics. The reason they have stayed in their home in Istanbul is that they are a part of the architecture: attached to the walls with the grout that holds them together piece by piece. In the work, the tiles are absent, but the seemingly unimportant grouts are what stand out - they appear to be oozing out of their place. Their impressions have been shifted into the third dimension; as if they are moving forward at us in space and time by protruding out of the wall.
Above Mentioned Tiles proposes a new interpretation of the ceramic material with its conceptual relationship to space and time. The heritage of ceramics is brought to the forefront not through the precious çini tiles, but through their placement which has held them together for centuries.
Above Mentioned Tiles (I-II-III), 2021
Glazed ceramics
145x87x5 cm
90x113x5,5 cm
118x88x5,5 cm
detail
detail
Avatar - Primer Root, 2020
Handmade natural dyes from local plants and stones of Cunda on paper
230x100 cm
The Avatar series, which revaluates time and space with a longing for rooting; looks closely to the ground, what grows from there, and processes it again; goes deep from where the body stands and explores new knowledge and interests between the roots of life. Avatar - The Primer Root, as we know it, was formed when the artist watched the changes of the plants from her desk at Gümüşsuyu from moment to moment during the quarantine times when life stopped. The shadows of all these plants that came under her perspective settled into her own shadow. This plant-shadow that followed the artist to Cunda, was colored here with rich stone and earth tones unique to the region formed by thousands ofyears of geological transformations. While the conditions of pandemic that secure and distance the human body from where it is, the screen views enable us to the corners of the world. In this new interval, when the physical and mental part of the being is radically divided, new dreams and thoughts are waiting to take root.
detail
Adapting Charlottenburg Series, 2019
Pigment print on archival paper
variable dimensions
Timescape Series (I-II-III), 2018
Ceramics
25x22x18 cm
40x25x25 cm
42x30x20 cm
Loaded I-II, 2017
Ceramics
41x41x15 cm
45x21x8,5 cm
detail
Debris, 2018
Ceramics,105x80 cm
Memory Loss I-II, 2017
Charcoal on paper
100x70 cm
76x56 cm
Rooted Matters,
2016, Ceramics, 37x33x41 cm, Unique
An Ottoman vase, known for its stylized beautiful floral décor, immersed to the lump of clay that the object is also made of. It is no longer clear whether it’s captivated by or created from the material. The direct translations of the real flowers with its imperfect renderings to emphasize the unprocessed nature without any stylization. The work is a part of the series that problematizes the material ceramics and it's history by making formal experiments.
This work, which was created for the exhibition Nature Morte curated by Marcus Graf, approaches to the idea of nature with both floral and cultural point of view. The idea of temporariness, which states that everything has a certain lifespan, is fixed to the material ceramics and wallpaper ironically with a decor made out of dying flowers. Traditional Ottoman ceramic vessels emerge and/or hide themselves on this rich floral texture, and become one with the time and space. These vessels, that we can’t tell whether if they are appearing or disappearing, get hung somewhere between this finite process. Temporary Permeable recalls the garden and craft culture that is no longer a part of Istanbul through incomplete vessels and flowers left to rot.
Temporary Permeable,
2016, Site-specific Installation, Ceramics, Wallpaper, 290x180cm
2015, Marker and watercolour on paper, 29x24 cm
2015, Ceramics, 32x24x35 cm
2015, Wallpaper, Variable dimensions
Minor Heroisms, 2015 Installation view
Minor Heroisms, 2015 Installation view
Unforeseen Resistance,
2015, Galeri Zilberman, İstanbul,
(Detail - Scenary - Surface), Ceramics, Marker and Watercolor on Paper, Wallpaper, Variable Dimensions
“Burçak Bingöl brings together a scene from a 17th Century Persian miniature with the recent political events in Gezi Park in her piece Unforeseen Resistance (2015). The original miniature, a tile panel in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, depicts a garden picnic. Vessels, vases and other crockery decorated with floral motifs are strewn across the grass, similar floral motifs appear on the figures’ dress. There is no real distinction between the opulent flora in the garden, its surrounding landscape and representations of nature used as decoration on crockery and garments. What is camouflaging or decorating what, and which came first: art or nature? All the visual elements of the tile dissolve into each other in one magnificent homogenised layer. In her project Bingöl reverses this process: her sculpture - modelled after a commonly used Ottoman vase - is growing out of its source material, a clump of clay. Is the object resisting the clay and breaking free from it, or is it subordinated by its own source material and imprisoned by it? It is hard to say, but the cracks of a struggle show visibly in the work. Gone is the flat surface of the miniature. Bingöl has bestowed volume and a sculptural presence onto her vase. Her decorative element is a controversial one: grass from Gezi Park. In May 2013 Gezi Park became the backdrop and symbol of nationwide unrest. Starting originally as a protest against plans to turn Gezi Park, one of the last green spaces around Istanbul’s Taksim area, into a shopping mall, protesters “occupied” the park in ways the gentry in the Persian miniature did. They sat on the grass, asserted their presence, held picnics…until the police violently broke it up. Soon the protest turned into broader demonstrations against the AKP government’s increasing encroachment on freedom of expression and other civic liberties, as well as on Turkey’s secularism. Fast forward to 2015 and the situation in Turkey has deteriorated on every front. The Gezi protests, like the grass motifs on the vase, left their indelible mark on Turkish society. The question of what this means in the long run is, like Bingöl’s object’s relationship to its material, an uneasy one.”*
*Excerpt from the catalogue of the exhibition Minor Heroisms, curated by Nat Muller
The Fall I-II,
2015, Ceramics, Plexiglass, 24x45x24
The work problematizes the idea of making. It builds itself with the broken shard of a typical traditional ceramic vessel. It reveals visual information with the glamorization oozes out of the cracks of a broken Ottoman vase. The secret potential of the local history is expressed with today’s point of view, while the pieces come together to form a fragile whole again.
Self-Conscious,
2015, Video, 43", Ed. 5+1 A.P.
Self-Conscious (2015) is a video work defines a threshold of the artist’ practice where past and present collides into each other to form an alternative construction for the future. 46 seconds-long still video was shot in her new studio in Istanbul where she eventually settled in 2011. The work portrays a highly conscious precarious moment that seeks ways to relate the now and then. The artist sits on Daydreamer (2011), a fragile, one person ceramic table and a chair, placed in front of Cruise (2014), a ceramic life-size truck. She wears a dress from a site-specific installation Unforeseen Transformation (2011) with her hair decorated with fresh leaves from Gezi Park. While a Victorian wallpapers hang down and divide the place, various works and different patterns from east and west blends in and composes this quite personal diorama for the unglazed Ottoman vase that stands still on the edge of the table waiting for a shift to have a new form.
The artist not only reflects to her own history but also reflects to the very meaning of the material ceramics on that very specific geography and seeks alternative ways of coming to terms with a loaded heritage.
I'm a description. Click to edit me
Barbie Blues,
2013, Ceramics, 28x21x26 cm / pedesta d:30 cm, h:110 cm
Burçak Bingöl, in her sculpture named ‘Barbie Blues’, deals with a world order where nothing can be ideal. Here however, we are faced with a beauty that is idealized as the symbol of Western beauty. One half of Barbie’s body is covered in a depressive blue, making a reference to ‘the blues’. Barbie is quiet in her deep sadness. On a table as wide as her height, she broods over the future in her deep sadness, as if to make a reference to Rodin’s “The Thinker”. She fears a world where ideal beauty may disappear. With her mind all topsy-turvy with intercultural notions of beauty, she questions the meaning of existence.”*
*Excerpt from the catalogue of the exhibition The Way We Were, curated by Ferhat Özgür
Gold glazed ceramics, 30x40x30 cm, Ed. 3+1 A.P.
Gold glazed ceramics, 26x51x26 cm, Ed. 3+1 A.P.
Maneuverability - Part I - II - III
2012, Gold Glazed Ceramics, 26x51x26 cm, Ed. 3+1 A.P
This work was made out of gold glazed ceramics by molding a vehicle’s water tank. The form comes from the function, which is to contain the maximum amount of liquid. The work re-defines the relationship between form and function and which comes first. As a functional object transforms and looses its functionality, the intricate form exists only for it visuality. This work that puts forward the form-or formlessness- of the object which is only determined by its function, reinventing the relationship between ceramic and the container that goes way back to ancient period, from an industrial point of view and transforms an average industrial waste into a sculpture by emphasizing the subjects of visuality and value.
Impact
2014, Metal, 105x95x40 cm
The work decontextualized a car’s hood that is wrecked in an accident by covered with burgundy velvet. Pieces of the car examine the relationship between art and industry by focusing on the duality between the unique and mass production. As the unfortunate errors become monuments with the idea of “accident”, an industrial waste covered in velvet and transforms the perception with its feminine character.
Permeable I
2013, Marker on Paper, 100x95 cm
Burçak Bingöl’s new works on paper reflect her dense cultural heritage and extend her continued fascination with patterns. Through her choice of a vivid floral pattern, Bingol acknowledges the influence of Islamic tradition. Through her labor-intensive process of tracing, copying and reconstructing she adopts an analytical approach to ornamentation. The works convey an unusual sense of order, although they are largely made up of non-symmetrical lines and patterns. This “mandala” like form alludes to a spiritual journey, without offering any clearly defined narratives. In fact, the works are organic (psychological) landscapes that hover between abstraction and representation, seduction and repulsion, mysticism and consumption that both embrace and disregard Eastern and Western tradition.
Permeable II
2013, Marker on Paper, 119x112 cm
Marker on Paper, 119x112cm