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b. Ankara-Türkiye, 1957
Bedri Baykam is one of Türkiye's internationally most well-known artists and intellectuals.
From age six until today, he has had exhibitions in Bern, Geneva, New York, Washington, Paris, London, Rome, Munich, Frankfurt, Stockholm, San Francisco, Monaco, Cannes, Berlin, Sydney and Los Angeles, to name a few.
Bedri Baykam is the son of politician Dr. Suphi Baykam and engineer-architect Mutahhar Baykam. He studied at Sorbonne University in Paris from 1975 to 1980 and earned an MBA. During this time, he also studied drama in L'Actorat, Paris. He lived in California from 1980-1987, studying painting and filmmaking at the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC, now CCA) in Oakland. He has had several shows in New York, California, and Paris. He returned to Türkiye in 1987 and has been living in İstanbul since.
He has had 151 solo shows and participated in numerous group shows. His works have been shown in museums and institutes such as Akademie der Künste (Berlin), Picasso Museum (Barcelona), Roland-Garros Museum (Paris), Pinacothèque de Paris (Paris), Stedelijk Schiedam Museum (Holland), Museum der Moderne (Salzburg), Osthaus-Museum Hagen (Germany), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Bahrain National Museum (Bahrain), Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen (Düsseldorf), National Academy of Arts of Ukraine (Ukraine) and in Biennales such as Cairo, Venice, İstanbul and Buenos Aires; he also showed his works at galleries worldwide, such as Daniel Templon (Paris), Stephen Wirtz (San Francisco), Yahşi Baraz (İstanbul), The Proposition (New York), Gallery Siyah Beyaz (Ankara), E.M. Donahue (New York), Galerie Kuchling (Berlin), Lavignes-Bastille (Paris), Galerie Pages (Geneva), Opera Gallery (London), Gloria Delson Contemporary Arts (Los Angeles) among others.
Baykam is one of the pioneers of New Expressionism in the early 80s and of multi-media political art. He has directed several 16 mm films and videos and has acted in several parts of feature films. He is the author of 32 published books and two feature film scripts, and there are 61 catalogs and nine books about his works. Baykam also became one of the graffiti artists who changed the face of New York in the 80s. Bringing the large-scale works, politics, and eroticism that he has standardized since the 80s to our contemporary art scene, the artist has started to produce "4D" four-dimensional works that have attracted significant attention all over the world as an extension of his transparent layers series with digital imagery and all sorts of transparencies about which he has been working on for the past two decades.
He is the co-founder and actual President of Uluslararası Plastik Sanatlar Derneği (UPSD-Türkiye Plastic Arts Association), a member of the International Association of Art (IAA) - an official partner of UNESCO. In 2011, Baykam's proposal to start a World Art Day on the birthday of Leonardo da Vinci during the 17th General Assembly of IAA World in Guadalajara/Mexico was accepted unanimously by the participating countries. Since then, every year, a growing number of artists' associations in numerous countries are celebrating "World Art Day," with several art forms harmoniously blending. In 2019, UNESCO accepted the proposal brought by Baykam as World President of IAA, and World Art Day became one of the International UNESCO Days. Bedri Baykam was elected as the World President at the 18th General Assembly of the International Association of Art (AIAP/IAA), the official partner of UNESCO held in Pilsen, Czech Republic, in 2015, and served in this position for seven and a half years, handed over the Presidency to South Korean Kwang Soo Lee in the 19th Extraordinary General Assembly of AIAP/IAA held in İstanbul in 2023 and Baykam became the President Honoraire of IAA..
Also, Baykam has been a columnist for several Türk publications in the past, such as Tempo, Siyah-Beyaz, Aydınlık, Akşam, and OdaTv, among others. He has been writing in Cumhuriyet daily for long years. He is one of the central characters of the artistic and political milieu in Türkiye. He was a Party Assembly Member of CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi), the Türk social democrats, in the second half of the 90s and a Presidential candidate for the same Party in 2003.
Baykam is the author of 32 books and two feature-length screenplays. Baykam still writes for Cumhuriyet Newspaper.
The artist founded Piramid Publishing (1998) and Piramid Sanat (art center, 2006) in Taksim Square in Istanbul, one of the most active and independent spots in contemporary art. He has also curated several group exhibitions.
Baykam mainly lives and works in İstanbul; he is married to journalist and writer Sibel Baykam, and they have a son, Suphi Baykam (born in 1999).
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EXHIBITION: LES DEMOISELLES REVISITED
TARİHLER : May 2 - June 14 2025
OPENING : May 6 from 6:30 pm
PRIVATE VIEWINGS : starting May 3rd, private viewings available by reservation only
LOCATION : S/BEAUBOURG GALLERY 35 Rue Quincampoix, 75004
CONTACT: Micaela Neveu +33 (06) 50 55 07 28
S/Beaubourg Gallery +33 (01) 42 71 12 16
GALERIE@ARTENGAGEMENTCONSULTING.COM
Under the direction of Art Engagement Consulting (Micaela Neveu) and Art Mouvance – Société pour l’ Art (Patrik Gunnteg), Les Demoiselles Revisited marks a highlight of the 2025 season at the S/Beaubourg Gallery. Extending an uninterrupted dialogue with Picasso's Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon — intensified on the occasion of the painting's centenary in 2007 — the exhibition follows in the continuity of BEDRİ Baykam’s approach, the major figure in the introduction and dissemination of new pictorial abstraction in Turkey during the 1980s. Rejecting any mimetic reinterpretation, Baykam offers a post-orientalist re-reading of Picasso’s foundational work, where collective memory, geopolitical critique of the gaze, and the subversion of Western aesthetic canons intersect. Through a stylistic approach of fragmentation, the artist unfolds a quasi-baroque and plural language, made of disjointed sequences, juxtapositions, and superimpositions, liberating the visual narrative from any linearity to establish a perpetual movement. This formal variability, constitutive of his practice, places Les Demoiselles Revisited within a phenomenological logic: the exhibition becomes an active experience of perception, where the viewer, confronted with a plurality of signs, continuously reconfigures their relationship to the image. Between homage and subversion, Baykam reactivates the blind spots of modernism — coloniality, fetishization, scopophilic eroticism — and, through a fragmented approach, reconfigures a critical memory of art history. The eroticized aesthetics of bodies, languorous postures, the sensuality of silhouettes, and the play of feminine shadows critically interrogate the representations of the feminine in a Western perspective.
EXHIBITION OVERVIEW
The exhibition Les Demoiselles Revisited by BEDRİ Baykam, presented at the S/Beaubourg Gallery, stands out for its innovative expographic approach based on a methodology of performative curating, where the act of exhibiting becomes a staging in itself. This paradigm, inspired by Austin’s principle of How to Do Things with Words, extends the reflection of art historian Micaela Neveu, for whom "looking is organically integrating what is given to be seen, making it active within oneself." The exhibition thus becomes an immersive space, where the viewer actively engages in a perceptual experience. In a continuous critical dialogue with Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon — further intensified by the centenary of the painting — Baykam offers a contemporary reinterpretation that goes beyond mere homage. The central figure in Turkish contemporary art and a pioneer of new abstractionist painting in the 1980s, he situates his reinterpretation within a thematic, philosophical, and political framework. His work is deeply rooted in Western metaphysics while also engaging with contemporary geopolitical tensions. Committed to an aesthetics of the “Beau”, Baykam questions canonical masters through the lens of current ideologies, particularly critiquing the interpretative excesses of orientalism, both in the United States and Turkey. Drawing on Cubist principles — the multiplication of perspectives, perspectival fragmentation — he deploys both visual and narrative fragmentation, where female figures, detached from their original contexts, are projected into ambiguous spaces, charged with the eroticism of the body. For Professor and art critic Hasan Bülent Kahraman, the composition thus becomes a theater of intersecting gazes: women who look and are being looked at, Picasso observed by Baykam, who in turn scrutinizes him. This mise en abyme of the gaze questions its very production, as well as the position from which it is exercised. Baykam thus generates an open, polyphonic narrative, freed from any univocal storytelling and structured around a perpetual movement of interpretations. This architecture of the gaze, where subjectivity and specular reflections intersect, as suggested by Kahraman, recalls that of Las Meninas by Velázquez, where the baroque device of representation reflects the nature of the gaze and the act of artistic creation as a world that is a dream, an illusion. Formally, Baykam employs collages, free brushstrokes, transparency effects, and lenticular surfaces to craft a baroque aesthetic of narrative multiplicity. Through these techniques, he revitalizes the imagery of the body, shadow, postures, and the eroticized feminine figure, while renewing the modes of perception and contemporary visual language. Through his often-faceless silhouettes and bodies abandoned to nudity, Baykam posits voyeurism and interrogates how the spectator’sgaze imposes itself upon the feminine figure. He also interrogates the stereotypes embedded in the history of Western art, where the female body is often reduced to a mere object of desire or the enduring figure of the prostitute. Through this approach, the artist highlights established visual conventions, offering a new reading of the feminine body and shedding light on the complex dynamics of power, desire, and domination that underpin its representation. The performative scenography designed by Art Mouvance transforms the encounter between artwork and viewer into a reflective experience, where the identities of the Self are redefined in the very act of perceiving. In contrast, the second part of the exhibition, located in the basement, adopts a minimalist scenography, conceived as a space of retreat conducive to concentration. This setup isolates a series of works that directly address nudity and sexuality, not as provocation, but as tools for deconstructing visual and cultural norms. Restricted access to adults aims to preserve the symbolic and critical intensity of this confrontation. Under the direction of Micaela Neveu and Patrik Gunnteg, Les Demoiselles Revisited goes beyond the simple juxtaposition of works to question the very function of the exhibition. It explores the boundaries of art, its ability to awaken both the intellect and the senses, embodying a continuous quest to renew artistic languages in a world that is constantly reconfiguring the relations of power, identities, and narratives.
Bedri Baykam, Vous Êtez Bien Chez Madame Claude, mixed media on canvas, 168x238 cm, 2025.
Bedri Baykam, Consommer Avec Modération, mixed media on canvas, 150x220 cm, 2025.
ABOUT S/BEAUBOURG GALLERY & ART ENGAGEMENT CONSULTING
Under the direction of art historian and founder of Art Engagement Consulting, Micaela Neveu, the new S/Beaubourg Gallery —located just steps from the Centre Pompidou —has, since its reopening in mid-March 2025, been reimagined as a space for reflection, experimentation, and critical thought. More than a venue dedicated to aesthetics, the gallery has become a true laboratory, where art questions, deconstructs, and redefines our relationship to the world by challenging artistic and cultural conventions. Its inauguration on March 21, 2025, was marked by the exhibition Entropie by Antoni Taulé, praised by both critics and the public for its powerful spatial conception and its resonance with contemporary concerns. This foundational project launches a new program focused on performative curating, developed by Art Mouvance – Société pour l’Art, represented by Patrik Gunnteg, where the exhibition itself becomes an act of thought, exploring the boundaries between art, culture, and critical discourse. In this spirit, a partnership with Art Mouvance has given rise to the Club Dumas, a monthly literary and artistic circle. Each meeting will introduce a theme in dialogue with the current exhibitions, creating a space of exchange among writers, artists, thinkers, and audiences around the resonances between text, image, and society. The Club Dumas embodies the gallery’s ambition to become a vibrant space of intellectual engagement, where art nourishes both thought and vision. Beginning in September 2025, S/Beaubourg Gallery will launch a new series of projects devoted to the intersection of art, artificial intelligence, and emerging forms of creativity. These initiatives reflect a clear commitment to exploring how new technologies can act as sensitive, critical, or poetic extensions of contemporary artistic practice.