As Adam, Early in the Morning: Berke Doğanoğlu

As Adam, Early in the Morning marks Berke Doganoglu’s first solo show in Turkey and gathers a comprehensive body of works by the artist which spans over the past five years.  The exhibition is constituted of two chapters with a change of display. 

The series of paintings As Adam, Early in the Morning is a celebration of the physical body with all its awkwardness through the narrative of a pure figure. The paintings here evoke inertia, weariness and temporality through these bodies. They are recognized in their physicality, which becomes a metaphor for their psychology. The viewer is entitled to project on the paintings since they do not carry any narrative. On the contrary, they may sometimes even appear as landscape paintings.

Through the humanity of these anonymous bodies, the painter invites us to reflect on the experience of bodily existence:  « The body is a metaphor for the psychology of the figure and is a physical thing substantial in itself. What interests me is the physicality of the body and the fact that it has mass, carries feelings and has a certain awkwardness and vulnerability. My paintings belong to an intimate world, one that is slightly recluse. In most cases, the eyes are obscured, the head is removed or the figure turns its back on us. The paintings show the physicality and the vulnerability of the figure without revealing who that person is. This anonymity allows the viewer to understand the narrative on a psychological level. No longer a vehicle for representing a specific person, the body starts to become something that feels substantial in its own right: body as a potato or a rock, body resembling a whale washed up on a beach, body as a material thing.»