Young artist Kerem Ozan Bayraktar meets the audience at Pg Art Gallery in October with his second solo exhibition, “Tinnitus.”
A graduate of Marmara University’s Painting Department, Kerem Ozan Bayraktar presents his recent digital photography works in this exhibition. As in his first exhibition, “Echo,” the artist once again chooses a metaphor related to sound, selecting “Tinnitus” — a term from medical literature meaning “ringing in the ears,” heard only by the patient — as the title of the show. Tinnitus not only refers to a condition with clear physiological causes, but also alludes to the superstitious feeling of “someone is talking about me,” the anxiety created by speaking of a person who does not exist, and the way reality can be shaped by desire.
Rather than presenting classical photography that captures what already exists, the artist’s photographs are the product of constructed scenes, created at the intersection of the physical camera and the virtual camera.
The central concern of the works focuses precisely on this intersection, on the realization of a phantasmagoric “other,” and on its eventual collapse. This “other” depicted by the artist is the image of the woman produced by the patriarchal gaze — portrayed as unattainable and mysterious. Through both the compositions of the scenes and the play of signs, the works seek ways to dismantle this idealized “other,” which has been falsely identified with the supposed ambiguity of nature. The artist traces this “other” in fragments, and then signals its absence by creating inconsistencies between the works.
In these pieces, Kerem Ozan continues the silence he inherited from his painting practice, with his theatrical, frozen figures placed within empty and unsettling spaces.
