Baris Dogrusöz has been encoding specific types of architecture into a visual lexicon since 2015, the year he arrived in Beirut. The artist has collected an
inventory of military artifacts called pillboxes*, which are concrete guard- posts that are observable around all sensitive institutional, military and private buildings alongside roads, bridge, borders and contested territories. These structures are often camouflaged to conceal their locations and to maximize the element of surprise.
They may be part of a trench system and form an interlocking line of defense.
Observing the ubiquity of these artifacts, the artist has undertaken a process of indexing the loopholes as if they were extropic masks", in other words, optical devices that remain open, never to be closed, and that strictly obey military logic. Whether in Lebanon, Syria, or Palestine the loopholes incarnate the physical representation of a territorial limit or the presence of a volatile force in control.