KÜNSTLERHAUS

BETHANIEN

Exhibition

TİMUR ÇELİK

Komm nach Hause

Komm nach Hause, 2022, Oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm

TIMUR ÇELIK, born in Gümüshane (Turkey) in 1960, lives and works in Berlin.

TIMUR ÇELIK studied painting at Marmara University in Istanbul in the early 1980s and has since participated in group exhibitions at the Max Liebermann Haus, Berlin and the Contemporary Art Center, Ankara, among others, as well as presenting works in numerous solo exhibitions in Istanbul, Ankara and Berlin, not least at Künstlerhaus Bethanien.

Çelik’s small-format painting “Komm nach Hause” was created directly under the impression of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It shows a full-grown bear that has grabbed a marksman by the upper right arm with its mouth and is lifting him off the ground with one paw. The marksman, dressed only in army pants and boots, holds a precision rifle in front of his bare torso. He is easily recognizable as Russian President Vladimir Putin, just as the latter has had himself photographed several times as a wiry macho and nature lover, riding or fishing, for representative purposes.

Çelik’s Siberian brown bear seems to have sprung from a Russian fairy tale. It dominates this insidious image as the symbolic figure of a rebellious force that, by snatching the hunter and taking him back to its own territory, seems to set an impulse critical of power and Russia.

With the kind support of the State of Berlin – Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

Exhibition
19.05. – 12.06.2022
Tue - Sun: 2 - 7pm
Admission free

Opening
19.05.2022
7pm - 10pm