Draft:Burak Karavit

Burak Karavit (born June 21,1974 in Ankara, Turkey) is a Turkish artist based in New York. His love for photography, which started with the Pentax Analog camera, which his musician father gave him when he was 5 years old, became a determining factor in his life and reinforcing his interest in art.

After graduating from Marmara University Fine Arts Faculty, he started his professional career as a graphic designer. Having worked as an art director for international brands in Turkey's well-known advertising agencies for many years, Karavit designed cinema posters for many advertising campaigns and Hollywood Film Companies as a Silicon Graphics (SGI) artist in the 90s.

In addition to his professional career, Karavit, who started collage studies, which he was passionate about, during his university years, was among the leading artists who produced his designs by dressing on deep wooden constructions in those years. He continues to produce his collages, which he designed with traditional methods for many years, in the digital environment by using technology at the highest level and skillfully. These awe-inspiring works are knitted by knots by bringing together Karavit's love for photography and his technical skills and experience gained in his professional life. Expressing that art represents the door to freedom and is the simplest tool that establishes the connection between the masses, Karavit has made it his mission to increase common sense and awareness in the society with the social messages he describes in his works.

Karavit still continues his works in his studio in New York and participates in exhibitions and art fairs.

Biography
Burak Karavit was born in 1974 in Ankara, Turkey. After 8 years living in Ankara, Karavit and his family came to Istanbul, where artist spent his childhood.

Drawing and Photography were always his favorite activities, and this interest channeled him into pursuing an art career. Upon earning the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Marmara University Fine Arts Faculty, Karavit started his professional career as a Graphic Designer. This enabled him to learn and experiment on the technics of the profession since the first-ever computers had just been introduced for photo manipulation and print production. Along the way within various design/advertising agencies in Istanbul, he had worked his way upwards to become an Art Director. After that period, he co-founded his own design agency, executing several campaigns for mid to large-sized corporations. During that time, Karavit got the chance to experiment more with Photography and decided to pursue this branch of art professionally in which he was approaching as a hobby. He worked as a product photographer and as a post-production editor for more than two decades.

What paved the way to the collaged digital artworks was his love of photography and the technical abilities that he had been able to combine and weave it all together. His large-scale digital collages hide independent stories within each art piece. For Karavit, art is a great storytelling medium and he is hoping to achieve his stories to be reached out to the audiences through his perspective, extensive research, and multi-discipline experience. It is remarkable that he uses a record number of layers of intertwined photographs in his works designed in large sizes, and the fact that each work has a unique manifesto further increases the impact of his art and the value of his works.

Karavit, who is constantly in search of innovation in his works and the materials he uses, started to design visual biographies in 2017. The visual biography, the first of which he designed for the famous singer and songwriter Alicia Keys, Swiss Beatz and their family, gave him the title of being the first and only artist working in this field.

One of the most prestigious works of Karavit, who has designed and produced these works as commission-based projects, is the work titled "The Visual Biography of Muhammad Ali", which will be exhibited at the Muhammad Ali Museum in Louisiana, which the artist started in 2019, and currently working on.

Vakt-i Fener
Vakt-i Fener is a unique work of art that brings its viewers the firsts of Fenerbahçe and tells the viewer its history of more than a century, chronologically. This work, which will be passed on to generations, is a visual atlas that transfers Fenerbahçe's history to future generations. It is the "Art of History" for Fenerbahçe Sports Club. The work tells about Fenerbahçe's history of more than a century, its memories from 1907 to the present, all its presidents, all branches and milestones, in chronological order, with a system that works clockwise.

Vakt-i Fener, carried out by the joint work of Fenerbahçe Sports Club and Fenerbahçe USA Association, and brought to life by the artist is 2.28 m in width and 1.16 m in height. Produced in C Print technique. The 3-dimensional (Lenticular) material in the middle and two different communication materials are used together, and with this structure the work is a first in the world. The first part of the study, which is two-dimensional; It was created by overhauling 1,676,000 photographs and nearly 400,000 supporting images, and restoring or coloring 900 photographs one by one among more than 2 million images by the artist.

The part in the middle, which is the heart of the work, was designed with the 3D Lenticular technique. This three-dimensional space has a kinetic that moves from left to right (Flip Animation). Fenerbahçe logo transforms into a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's by making a 5 step transition. In this section, which defined as animatic, the Fenerbahçe logo was prepared using a total of 6600 images using the collage technique.

It took about 1.5 years for the artist to complete this work and in the first 6 months of the work, the artist studied and assimilated the history of Fenerbahçe in depth and detail from various sources.

Although Vakt-i Fener is a digital work that reflects Fenerbahçe's history, it has a unique feature due to the fact that each work is signed with different codes and made special to the recipient. This work, which will meet with a limited number of people in a specially produced wooden box, together with its original seal and certificate, accompanied by a booklet describing the visual presentation of Fenerbahçe's chronological history.

Exhibitions

 * Moniker Art Fair - New York - 2019
 * Istanbul Concept Gallery - Love 360 Fest (Walk In My Shoes) - 2020
 * Istanbul Concept Gallery - AR(T)CHIVE II - 2020
 * IAAF (Istanbul Antique and Art Fair) - 2021
 * Istanbul Concept Gallery - Love 360 Fest - (Where is your home?) - 2022
 * Bodrum Sanat ve Antika Fuarı - 2021
 * Istanbul Concept Gallery - Love 360 Fest - (Time to Act) - 2021
 * İlk Nefes Sergisi / Türk Eğitim Derneği - 9 - 16 June 2021
 * 42 Maslak - Karma Sergi - 2019
 * Istanbul Concept Gallery - 10x10 Karma Sergi - 2019
 * Love 360 Fest - 2019Artbox Zurich Exhibiton.jpg Train Station]]
 * Artbox Project – SWISSARTEXPO - 2019
 * Artbox Project - Miami - 2019
 * Burak Karavit with his work - DC.jpg
 * Moniker Art Fair – New York - 2019
 * Miami Art Basel - 2018
 * See | me – Exhibitions – New York Art Scope Show - 2018
 * See | me – Exhibitions – Miami Art Scope Show - 2017
 * See | me – Exhibitions – New York Art Scope Show / Art Takes Soho - 2017