Painter and academician Prof. Hüsamettin Koçan, the founder of the Baksı Museum in Bayburt’s Bayraktar village, presents his new exhibition Behind the Shadow at MERKUR Gallery. In his latest exhibition, Koçan blends the traditional products produced by Bayburt women with creativity and patience with his unique artistic language.
Continuing his artistic journey with the women living in Bayburt in this exhibition, Koçan revisits the bead braiding technique with a contemporary interpretation. The artist reinterprets the hair in which the crochet works are placed as a form in which women both bake bread and food in Anatolia and earn their bread through these crochet braids. Therefore, the material is used as it is without any intervention.
He emphasizes that when women from Bayburt wanted to create “sun” motifs from bead weaving according to their own desires, they created a colorful and shining sun symphony.
Koçan describes the exhibition in the following words: “This exhibition is an experiment. The experience here is the meeting of traditional crochet with the brush.”
Behind the Shadow
In the conceptual framework of the exhibition, the shadow symbolizes woman’s intimacy, while the one behind it symbolizes the projections of this intimacy on the inner world. Hüsamettin Koçan, who has always opened a space for local women’s power and creativity in the Baksı Museum when he founded in Bayburt, contributes to the women’s world as a man’s hand in this exhibition, emphasizing that beadwork is a journey of patience and presents an exhibition based on this understanding. In this exhibition, where crochet, beads and patience meet, is a meaningful dialog where the traditional and the contemporary fuse, where women and men come together through art, a handshake. The exhibition Behind the Shadow traces the always mysterious meetings between stains and colors.
Details to Visit the Exhibition
Date: March 15-April 19
Venue: MERKUR – Polat Piyalepasa. Istiklal Mah. Piyalepasa Bulvari.32/D Beyoglu
Login Information: MERKUR
