Mehmet Gazioğlu

The book titled MEHMET GAZİOĞLU, which includes the works of the versatile artist Mehmet Gazioğlu, who has produced photography, digital art, metal wall sculptures and metal sculptures, as well as his life story, was published in English and Turkish by YEM Publishing.

As Mehmet Gazioğlu grew up, he gathered his imagination from people and life; he derives his technique from painting, photography, writing, drawing, sound, image, digital technology and metal; an artist who has woven his artistic cocoon by kneading his yeast from today and discipline...

The book offers the opportunity to get to know Mehmet Gazioğlu, an artist who is a candidate to be a source of inspiration for everyone who is looking for ways to express their dreams, especially those who are interested in art.

The graphic design concept of the book, which was prepared for publication as a result of intense efforts by Müge Gazioğlu, was made by Selim Cennetoğlu.

In the Foreword of the book, Cenk Gençdiş describes Mehmet Gazioğlu and his works as follows:

“…Mehmet Gazioğlu knitted his cocoon of art by gathering his imagination from his childhood, his materials from people and life as he grew up, using his technique from painting, photography, writing, drawing, sound, image, digital technology, metal, and kneading his leaven from today and discipline... He listened to photography lessons for hours and days, watched photographs, worked tirelessly to use his camera and lenses in the most efficient way on the streets of Istanbul, cities of India, roads of Nepal… He recorded images that could be normal for everyone, beautiful for everyone, ordinary for everyone. But with one difference… He did not look, see, or think like everyone else while watching those images, neither taking the photos nor evaluating them… He searched for images that could be considered unreal from time to time in his mind, heart and soul. For this, he used a camera, mobile phone, various computer programs and applications and showed the courage to transform that imaginary image into a visible one. He experienced not looking from a single window, but using all the possibilities of art…

Every time I think about how to put a photographer on the art and history scale, I think of a glamorous bird with two wings and colorful feathers. I believe that there is production on one wing and sharing on the other of this Phoenix. In other words, I question what this photographer has produced, how long he has been producing, whether he is still producing and whether he shares what he has produced or reveals it to people… With all his passion, discipline and experimentation, Mehmet Gazioğlu has produced many works in very different styles in a very short time. Not only that, he shared all of these works that he thought, dreamed of, worked, and spent time and effort on different platforms. He evaluated the possibilities of our age, used social media platforms such as Instagram, opened exhibitions in galleries and participated in art fairs. He nourished his courage in the production phase with his generosity in sharing… If we briefly examine the exhibitions he opened, we will have the chance to see the different works he tried.

When we examine his works between 2016 and 2020, we can say that we are facing a period in which Mehmet Gazioğlu discovered both the technical limits of photography and the limitlessness of his own imagination. He transformed the images he photographed with classical methods into surreal, extraordinary, imaginary frames by carrying the technological possibilities to the extreme. This can also be defined as a cocoon period in which the language of expression that he will construct before shooting in later works is formed.

Surrealist’s Dream, Mehmet Gazioğlu’s first work, based on his idea ‘Whatever you reflect comes back to you. Life is such a mirror.’ is an exhibition that he prepared in a short period of four months. This time, he set up the main frame of the work even before he used the camera, planned every detail from the subject he will shoot to the framing, from the arrangement to the presentation, and completed his work with the motto ‘looking at reality from an unrealistic window is a dream’... I think an important point of this exhibition is that he shared the exhibition’s income with the children with autism since he felt a bond with the children and the feeling of his work.

In his second exhibition Morphosis, Gazioğlu continued his previous surrealist dream by presenting the reverse reflection on the vertical axis, with the mirror effect technique. This makes it a continuation dream with the idea of following. Thus, the Surrealist’s Dream exhibition completes its story with its confidant.

In his third exhibition titled Transform, Mehmet Gazioğlu is now completing his own transformation and coming out of his cocoon, which he started to knit in his first exhibition. Now, he records his photos not only with his camera, but also with his mobile phone, uses both applications and computer programs in a way that obeys his imagination and completes the journey of modern man’s evolution from images to ideas, from ideas to data world. This is also in his portfolio as the last example of three years of intense work.

Today, we have tens and hundreds of schools that train one-dimensional people under the name of ‘specialization’… Everyone continues their struggle for life under a single title as ‘Knows almost everything’. However, this was not the case in ancient times… Everyone in the West and the East was involved in more than one discipline… Many ‘famous people’ we know have spent their lives in different fields as well. We do not know that Ömer Hayyam was a mathematician and astronomer while his poems were circulating on social media, and that Nietzsche was a poet and composer while praising his philosopher side. As the famous composer Hans Eisler stated in his saying ‘A person who only understands music cannot understand music,’ art has an inseparable connection with science and life.

Here, Mehmet Gazioğlu did not only deal with photography on this path he embarked on by combining his vision and imagination with his talent; in his rush with the world, with emotions and thoughts, he also included steel, which is actually an economic-commercial business. Much more difficult than photography, by using his physical strength for hours or even days, this time by putting forth a more intense effort to flap the wings of production and sharing much more powerfully... Just like in his photography works, he first fictionalized the concept he would describe, the dream he would convey, and then put it in the best way possible. He has found a medium to communicate effectively. He pondered on how different he could present metal and steel to us and produced different and extraordinary works of art by exerting the necessary discipline and effort for this. He continued the sharing habit he acquired through photography exhibitions, with sculptures where he turned an ordinary object into a work of art.

Mehmet Gazioğlu has deserved the title of a person with knowledge in different disciplines, which the Westerners call polymat, with three solo exhibitions he opened in a short period of four years, a group exhibition he participated in, and seven art fairs he participated in, and proved his artist identity first to himself and then to his audience with all the works he created.

WHO IS MEHMET GAZİOĞLU?

Mehmet GAZİOĞLU was born in Istanbul in 1977. He grew up in the steel industry, which his family has run for four generations, and worked there as Chief Operating Officer and Investment Officer. Growing up in an open-minded, social family that supported his identity provided him with inspiration. Inspired by an open mind, he transformed mechanical materials into more masculine and vibrant pop culture designs as conceptual art. He was interested in ancient and modern art, visual language, modern architecture, popular culture, and photography.

Mehmet GAZİOĞLU, placing creativity, passion, and vision at the center of his art, kept pace with rapidly developing technology through his unique style. Mehmet GAZİOĞLU, who unlocked his imagination by combining artistic preferences and new colorful techniques, thus began to write his own story.

He tried to make the invisible visible in metal. He made details perceptible in the material that even our physical perception could not notice. This formed an idea identical to the transformation of both the object and perception while creating awareness. By exceeding the limits of imagination, he began to work by combining new techniques with his abstract artistic preference.

Mehmet GAZİOĞLU, while transforming the wastes we ignore and many more materials that we do not realize, also allowed imagination to develop and increase by translating forms and colors. He believed that his sculptures were changeable and calm, but certainly not passive. He lit a fire in the middle of obscurity by adding to and cutting from the material.

Mehmet GAZİOĞLU, who entered the world of art as a collector at an early age, began to emerge with means of artistic expression and abstract models created by psychedelic photography, but the provocative possibilities provided by metal, thanks to its environmental and dimensional properties, shaped the artist’s journey.

By characterizing the mystery of digital effects with his surrealist works, he continued to create different works that combined his talents, emotions, and spiritual scenarios. With the decrease in awareness of his physical self, he achieved his own goal in the concept of digital art. In his digital and pop-art applications, he affected the audience not only visually but also emotionally and cognitively.

He continues to tell his own story with the arts that he left for us…