Ramazan Bayrakoğlu, 1966

Ramazan Bayrakoğlu began studying painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Dokuz Eylül University in 1984. He returned to the school as a teaching assistant in 1989 and became an associate professor in 1992. Bayrakoğlu works and lives in Izmir.

Bayrakoğlu invites us to think about the social and cultural codes that we use when interpreting visual information. Transforming and redefining film stills as well as photographs clipped from newspapers and magazines, the artist’s attitude provokes us as the viewer to reassess the mythos of the modern artist confronted by the overabundance of images in today’s world. Bayrakoğlu always uses an image that he finds striking from his visual archive; 2010 painting entitled “Fire” is a one in which he has worked from the photograph of a house in flames. This work leads us to contemplate, through a single image, dramatic concepts such as vanishing, exhaustion, and the evanescence of memories. “Fire” is an example of the artist seeking perfection through his choice of material.