For the following seven days, you will see seven pages from Yıldız’s “Notebook of Sleepers,” accompanied by original sketches from the series that the artist made during his military service in İstanbul in 2005. In these works, the artist depicts the soldiers’ troublesome relationship with sleep under a system of surveillance, where bodies are either forced to wake up or forced to sleep at hours arranged according to shifting duty schedules. What comes out as a result are scenes of boredom and exhaustion, that are between states of reality and dream.
—Elif Gül Tirben
Born in Eskişehir, Turkey, Bahadır Yıldız spent his childhood and youth in different parts of Anotalia such as Van (Erciş), Bursa and Izmir. After studying Printing for a year in Ege University, İzmir, he spent two years studying Political Science in Baku University, Azerbaijan where he became familiar with the Russian language and the drama of a magnificent culture in economic crises. Returning to Turkey, he completed his university degree in Sculpture in Akdeniz University, Antalya where he had a chance to study with Russian instructors (in its very first year, the faculty hired instructors from Russia in both departments of painting and sculpture) which allowed him to compare local and Russian styles in figure-drawing and develop his own figure perception. Yıldız’s works differs in size and material from five meter sand sulptures to smaller size sandpaper sculptures; from paintings on wood and pressed wood, to drawings and paintings on notebooks and ready made books. The artist also worked as a stage designer to several small size dance and theatre companies. Yıldız’s solo shows are “Last Stratum” in 2008, “Wood-en” in 2009, “Ultimately Erosions” in 2010 and “Pressed and Dried” in 2011, all presented in Gallery Apel, Istanbul.
Elif Gül Tirben studied International Relations in Middle East Technical University, Ankara. She continued her masters in Sociology in the same university with a focus on Urban Sociology. Later, she had a masters degree in Visual Arts from Sabancı University, Istanbul, where she worked as a Teaching Assistant for two years. Her interests are Social Theory and Sociology of Visual Arts. Elif currently works in Gallery Apel, Istanbul. You can follow her visual diary here.
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