Your most private room: Gökhun Baltacı at Kaufmann Repetto Milan

Gokhun Baltaci, The sky is black and golden and the moon is shining red, 2025. Installation view, kaufmann repetto, Milan. Courtesy of the artist and kaufmann repetto Milan / New York. Photo: Andrea Rossetti

By LUCA AVIGO February 11, 2025

Even before reaching the artworks, the unusually painted walls of the Kaufmann Repetto gallery in Milan put visitors on alert. The vast earth-brown or powder-pink surfaces make it clear: this exhibition aims to create an atmosphere. And Gökhun Baltacı’s (Ankara, Turkey, 1989) works—almost monochromatic in shades ranging from blue-gray to oil-green—further contribute to an earthy palette that remains consistent throughout the rooms, as if a filter had been placed over the viewer’s eyes.

He may have chosen the wall colors himself, given his past with pink: in 2013, the street art collective Avareler, which Baltacı co-founded during university in Ankara, decided to “go outside and paint things pink,” an anonymous group member explained in an interview. Pembe Serisi (Pink Series) was “a reactionary act against bad city planning and all those unaesthetic buildings,” they added.

But the works on display have nothing to do with guerrilla art: since 2017 the artist has only used oil pastels. And after several exhibitions in Ankara, a residency at the Cité internationale des arts for the Institut français, and participation in Paris Internationale 2022 and Art Basel Paris Fair 2024, Baltacı’s first solo show in a foreign gallery is no exception.

Far from spray paint and stencils, Baltacı, with extreme precision, combines blurred backdrops and fine details to create static, surrealist-inspired scenes in which he arranges evidently symbolic objects (keys, threads and buttons, flowers), direct references (a Nirvana cassette, a Chaïm Soutine catalog; even the exhibition title The sky is black and golden and the moon is shining red quotes the song Picture of Maryanne by Swans), and, sometimes, human subjects.

Just when, after the fourth moody, mysterious scene, one thinks they’ve grasped the gimmick and seen all the exhibition has to offer—a recognizable style capable of giving the illusion of meaning—one encounters what, for a moment, seems to be an early abstract by Guston. Untitled (2024) consists of a central blotch of black pastel strokes and a few red splashes on a blue-gradient background. Only after a moment does one notice the feathers and clawed legs, identifying the central mass as a bird of prey, and a flute striking it, making it bleed. What we now recognize as blood is so vivid that it seems to gush out from the painting’s surface—or rather, it looks like clots fallen onto the pictorial surface, slowly dissolving but yet not fully belonging to it. From the background gradient to the individual pastel strokes, everything follows the trajectory of the flying flute, giving the composition a dynamism that jolts us out of the daze we had fallen into. Not just due to the undeniable power of the piece, but mainly because of the rupture in the consistency of subjects that we had prematurely taken for granted. It promises that Baltacı has something to say after all. Perhaps there is no gimmick—perhaps we were too hasty. Better pay closer attention.

Gokhun Baltaci, The sky is black and golden and the moon is shining red, 2025. Installation view, kaufmann repetto, Milan. Courtesy of the artist and kaufmann repetto Milan / New York. Photo: Andrea Rossetti

Immediately, a more active and trusting observation reveals a depth behind each static scene, even compelling us to revisit, with fresh eyes, those we had initially skimmed over. More than the portraits or foreground objects, it is the less conspicuous elements, often in the background, that become truly intriguing. A simple fence, sometimes barely visible through a window; a paneled wall; a tablecloth with folding marks—through their silent, reiterated normality, they are not only imbued with meaning but, like accumulating clues, form a true topology. The links between these reference points hint at the emptiness between them—the unrepresented space between paintings—where one is left searching for a key to piece together the puzzle. The atmosphere, now palpable and fertile, is necessary for the heightened sensitivity that Baltacı induces by hypnotically repeating amulet-like objects in dull tones. And once he establishes the rules of his practice, the artist can effectively break them. He can surgically puncture the blurred patina with bright, sharp pigment punctum—sometimes in the form of bloodstains, sometimes of pure color—reactivating a chromatic range muted by the monochromies. Or he can tear through the stasis of his imaginary world, as in the case of the wounded bird of prey or in the night-blue triptych Untitled (2023), the exhibition’s second climactic peak: at its center, emerging from the folding screen we have already seen in 6 paintings, is a spread-open backside. In an exhibition so implicit, such explicitness creates a real shock, also manifested in the other two paintings of the triptych, where cherries tumble down stairs and onto the floor. In a world where everything rests motionless as in a crime scene, even a simple cherry suspended in mid-air stands out.

Far from being a gimmick, repetition and consistency reveal themselves as an exercise in self-control over a tumultuous undercurrent of violence and libido, muted yet omnipresent even in the most tranquil scene. In what Baltacı himself calls “drilling experiments,” the artist seems to rediscover the fear and wonder toward his surroundings that belong to childhood. In this, he recalls the research of Cy Twombly (who also used pastels—the quintessential childhood creative tool). But while Twombly embodies a topological spatial conception (based on relationships of proximity and continuity, typical of a newborn’s comprehension of the world) in his production of marks, symbols, and calligraphies on the painting’s surface, Baltacı implies it beyond the surface—and thus more insidiously. He assumes a childlike vision while maintaining the clarity and technique of a mature adult and artist, creating a silent tension between the literal and the uncanny hidden within it. Baltacı himself states: “I attempt to backstab the viewer by reintroducing them to everyday objects and ordinary gaps. I want to enter their most private room when they least expect it.” As it happens, your most private room is in Milan, open for visits until February 20. WM