Burhan Doğançay
Celebrated Turkish artist Burhan Doğançay has painted since 1964, focusing on the urban wall as a subject, and exploring the stories and visual markers of cities around the world. He moved to New York City from Turkey in the early 1960s and was immediately inspired by the way in which protest posters, graffiti, and decomposition of public surfaces could be a barometer of society. His tight crops appear abstract in certain incarnations, limiting his obsessive interest to the peeling of paint or the facades of building fronts. His colors and compositions often reference Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and he has also used decollage as an ode to their mixed media practices. Photographs of his travels around the world render these walls in three-dimensions, and alucobond brought him closer to these fascinating surfaces. His museum, erected in 2004 in Istanbul and pinned at the first contemporary art museum in the country, solidified his place as a legitimate commentator on the union between urban landscape and societal sentiments.
Doğançay has exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo, Brooklyn Historical Society, New York, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Kennedy Museum of Art, Athens, Ohio, Istanbul Modern, Turkey, and …
Celebrated Turkish artist Burhan Doğançay has painted since 1964, focusing on the urban wall as a subject, and exploring the stories and visual markers of cities around the world. He moved to New York City from Turkey in the early 1960s and was immediately inspired by the way in which protest posters, graffiti, and decomposition of public surfaces could be a barometer of society. His tight crops appear abstract in certain incarnations, limiting his obsessive interest to the peeling of paint or the facades of building fronts. His colors and compositions often reference Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and he has also used decollage as an ode to their mixed media practices. Photographs of his travels around the world render these walls in three-dimensions, and alucobond brought him closer to these fascinating surfaces. His museum, erected in 2004 in Istanbul and pinned at the first contemporary art museum in the country, solidified his place as a legitimate commentator on the union between urban landscape and societal sentiments.
Doğançay has exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo, Brooklyn Historical Society, New York, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Kennedy Museum of Art, Athens, Ohio, Istanbul Modern, Turkey, and Siegerlandmuseum, Siegen, Germany, among others. He received the Turkish National Medal of the Arts for Lifetime Achievement and Cultural Contribution in 1995. Notably he participated in the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, and has tapestries constructed from his famed “Ribbon” series by L’Atelier Raymond Picaud in Aubusson, France.
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Guggenheim Museum, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
MUMOK, Vienna, Austria
Istanbul Modern, Turkey
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, France