Berkay Bugdan

Berkay Bugdan

Turkiye

Drawing on themes of transience, chaos and the human footprint, Berkay Bugdan’s works incorporate various industrial materials and data analysis techniques with classical painting and sculpture. Bugdan’s works are characterized by his use of experimental surfaces and image composing methods that each introduce an aspect of relinquishing control for the artist.

Whether by chaotic output from software, uncooperative rectified materials or simple corrosion, the production methods often render the final piece just as much as the artist does.This conflict or balance between narrative perspective and unruly techniques define the artist’s unique style. Born 1986 Istanbul. Studied illustration at Maryland Institute College of Art with full scholarship. Currently set up in London.

Berkay Bugdan juxtaposes the image of serpentine sea monsters recurrent across mythologies like Typhon, Vritra, Leviathan, and Jormungandr, with a deluge of plastic waste; to illustrate the human impact on earth in a form more immediately resonant across many cultures.

We can say that it is impossible to intuitively grasp the enormity of the global environmental crisis from an individual’s perspective. Even more tangible aspects of the problem, like plastic pollution, are hard to fathom in terms of ‘millions of tons’, “trillions of particles’, or ‘thousands of extinct species”. No human alone could perceive the totality of these metrics firsthand. However, a culture-hero’s battle against insurmountable monsters, the motif of “chaoskampf”, is more relatably descriptive of the struggles ahead.

The narrative of “Kampf” is clear and simple: the monsters that we created through ignorance and greed will now have to be faced by the future. In no uncertain terms, Bugdan states that this is a battle for survival; and that “you and I, in this time and place, must do anything and everything to give our future a fighting chance”.