Burhan Doğançays Wände

With his move to New York in the 1960s, the Istanbul-born artist Burhan Dogançay (1929-2013) developed a deep fascination for the visual aesthetics of walls and barriers in cities. He was interested in exploring public space and its significance as an urban negotiation ground for social, political, and simultaneously artistic norms. He continuously sketched and photographed walls, barriers, and doors, transferring the captured motifs onto canvas as paintings. The artist has compiled his photographic evidence in the work series Walls of the World: a unique archive that includes around 30,000 images from 114 countries.

This book presents a selection of paintings and photographs from various series within Dogançay's entire Walls of the World complex. The images—like the walls themselves—are the result of layered techniques and materials. They reflect the temporal dimension of these surfaces through the use of different painting and collage techniques, showcasing the accumulated scribbles, posters, paper scraps, and graffiti. Short essays explore Dogançay's fascination with the wall as an urban projection surface and his methodology of using photography and sketching as a foundation for his graphic and painted works.