A baker’s dozen refers to 13 items rather than the 12 items in a standard dozen. The expression is commonly traced back to medieval England, where bread was subject to strict regulations concerning its price and weight. Bakers who sold underweight loaves risked punishment, so an extra loaf was supposedly added to every dozen as a precaution against accidentally coming up short.
Just in case.
Baker’s Dozen came into being in a similar spirit. The exhibition was conceived, at least initially, to make sure that I fulfilled and slightly surpassed the minimum number of solo exhibitions required by the bureaucracy for the progression of my academic career.
Another just in case.
The same logic continued into the making of the exhibition itself. According to the requirements, the exhibition needed to contain at least fifteen new works. So, just in case, there are sixteen.
Working toward a number rather than toward a single conceptual premise took me somewhat out of my comfort zone. It nudged me away from the predominantly conceptual way I usually work and toward the problem of making things, finding forms, materials and a visual language that still felt familiar to my habitual creative impulses while, quite literally, fulfilling the quantitative demands of bureaucracy. I found myself returning to the stainless steel, industrial materials and constructed systems that I habitually use in my conceptual work, only this time toward more formalist ends.
Yet the move toward a more formal way of working did not entirely leave behind the circumstances that prompted the exhibition. The language of quantity, measurement and regulation gradually entered the works themselves, as if they had begun to absorb and adopt some of the bureaucratic mechanisms that brought them into being. Grids, repetitions, measured divisions and adjustable structures introduce a certain minimalist restraint, while coexisting with formalist intuitive decisions of color, material and composition.
In the end, Baker’s Dozen became a way of finding room for invention within the limits that first brought it into being.
Installation view
Artworks
FLOWER!!!11!1 | 2026
stainless steel, cutting mat, spray paint, particleboard
33×27.5×5 cm
P.W.G | 2026
stainless steel, cutting mat, spray paint, particleboard
53x29x5 cm
Circles P.P.O.W | 2026
Circles G.O.G.W | 2026
stainless steel, cutting mat, spray paint, particleboard
62×46.5×5 cm
Three Sisters G.B.R.W | 2026
stainless steel, cutting mat, spray paint, particleboard
53x40x5 cm
Three Sisters G.B.G.W | 2026
stainless steel, cutting mat, spray paint, particleboard
54x46x5 cm
Three Sisters G.B.O.W | 2026
stainless steel, cutting mat, spray paint, particleboard
59×41.5×5 cm
Çiçek!!!11!1 | 2026
stainless steel, cutting mat, spray paint, particleboard
70x53x5 cm
G.G.O.W | 2026
stainless steel, cutting mat, spray paint, particleboard
48x72x5 cm
P.P.G | 2026
stainless steel, cutting mat, spray paint, particleboard
34x41x5 cm
B.Y.G | 2026
stainless steel, cutting mat, spray paint, particleboard
37.5x43x5 cm
B.G.O | 2026
stainless steel, cutting mat, spray paint, particleboard
50x70x5 cm
Twinsiees! G.P.W | 2026
Twinsiees! G.G.W | 2026
stainless steel, cutting mat, spray paint, particleboard
50×48.5×5 cm
Ground Floor | 2026
spray paint, paper
112×152 cm
About the artist
Born in 1988, Ankara, Turkey. Graduated from Fine Arts and Industrial Design departments at Yeditepe University. Earned a master’s degree in Fine Arts at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Successfully completed his PhD in 2020. Exhibited his artwork in solo shows in Istanbul and participated in numerous group exhibitions in Turkey, USA, Germany, Netherlands and Italy. Works as an assistant professor at Yeditepe University, lives and works in Istanbul.
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“Zafer Akşit belongs to the group of artists that understands how to balance intellectually challenging concepts with minimal but appealing aesthetics. His multidisciplinary oeuvre is characterized through his use of various disciplines ranging from objects to installation as well as from video to performance. Ready-made-like objects go hand in hand with especially produced items that he incorporates in works that critically, yet oft ironically question our perception of the word. In this sense, Akşit analyzes the ways how we perceive reality, and how we create knowledge out of the assumptions that we consider being right and true.”
– Marcus Graf