Playgirl, 2025 by Berke Yazıcıoğlu reimagines the pages of Playgirl magazine through a haze of luminous blue paint, transforming idealised images of male bodies into a dreamlike field of memory and projection. Drawing on the visual language of popular culture, the work reflects the artist’s interest in how desire is shaped through fantasy, recollection, and acts of looking.

Colour is central to the work. As Yazıcıoğlu explains, the painting’s distinctive lavender-blue palette evokes “the tint of your unconscious”, describing a chromatic space that recalls memory, sky, and dream spaces. Rather than a naturalistic blue, the artist describes the tone as “softer and pinker,” aligning the work’s atmosphere with states of fantasy, desire, and emotion. This sensibility intertwines with his exploration of “male submission” and “male objectification,” where the male figure is presented not as the source of desire, but as its object.

Yazıcıoğlu’s practice frequently navigates the tension between intimacy and performance, drawing on cinematic lighting, digital image culture, and queer visual histories. Across painting, drawing, and animation, his figures appear suspended between visibility and concealment, exploring the ways in which masculinity and desire are constructed and performed.