Mehtap Baydu

Galeri Nev is hosting Mehtap Baydu in the first exhibition of the new year. The artist, who last held the closing exhibition of the gallery's space on Gezegen Street in 2017, continues from where she left off, as always. The work that gave its name to the previous exhibition “The Distance Between Me and Everything”, that is, the skin that the artist took the mold out of her own body, is now on display like a dress, a coat, a “top” that she hangs on a hanger, on the edge of a table, or on a chair, as if to give it a rest. Mehtap Baydu thus rewrites the story of Şahmeran, who gets younger as she sheds her skin, by reflecting it on the existential and deep, daily and superficial practices of an artist. Baydu is also re-sculpting many of her past performances, of which she has removed various men's and women's clothing. The body is resting in the exhibition, however at the same time, it is disintegrating, breaking and decreasing, but it does not suffer. The almost surrealist porcelain torsos, which the artist made by casting again from her own body, are like a poem about how each of us collects our broken pieces, how we reassemble them, and how these new 'I's are always more 'sensitive' than the old ones... The artist also draws attention to the rarity and delicacy of the "piece" versus the "whole" by sometimes embellishing the smaller moulds she took from her back, armpits, back of the knees and other nooks and crannies of her body, as she arranges them as flowers or jewellery. Baydu, who completely removes the color from the exhibition apart from the shimmer of gold, also invites the audience to bring together the pieces they will collect from other sculptures. In the exhibition, which consists of only white porcelain, ceramics, plaster and polyester works, the red shoes that were exhibited before also appear as being free of their basic characteristics, namely their "redness". Mehtap Baydu, who sealed her own white face with the red lip moulds she took from others in her previous works, also are removed from her face. But Baydu collects, hides, and freezes her words/secrets in the crops of the "missing" busts showing only the necks, which she casts out of bronze this time. Thus, the part and the whole continue to reproduce by being associated with the word and the secret, the incomplete and the complete.