{"id":58462,"date":"2017-10-24T18:43:15","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T16:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=58462"},"modified":"2017-10-24T18:43:15","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T16:43:15","slug":"istanbul-art-scene-biennial-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/istanbul-art-scene-biennial-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Wie sich die Istanbuler Kunstszene im Jahr 2017 neu erfindet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much like the rest of the world, Turkey is going through a period of rapid and unpredictable social, cultural and political change. This has also spread to the art scene which has seen artists, galleries, biennials and art fairs swiftly adapting to the world around them.
\nSetting the tone for possible future cooperation, many art events in the city got aligned to coincide with the Istanbul Art Week last September. The events made the most of the international art crowd who got the chance to experience the 12th Contemporary Istanbul<\/a> art fair, the 15th Istanbul Biennial<\/a>, and a series of openings and major museum shows all in one week.<\/p>\n

\"\" Left: Lungiswa Gqunta, Lawn 1, 2016\/17 at the 15th Istanbul Bienali. Right: Galeri Artist Istanbul<\/p>\n

2016 was not an easy year for Turkey. After a series of attacks around the country\u2019s busiest avenue (Istiklal), followed by an alleged coup and clamp down on certain freedoms, concerns were raised in and outside the country. However, that hasn’t diminished the power and quality of the local art scene \u2014 indeed, it seems to have used the unrest as an opportunity to reinvent itself.
\nTake, for instance, the influx of new young galleries in the Istiklal area, which many businesses abandoned after the attacks in 2016. OJ<\/a> is one of the defiant new art spaces that\u2019s relocated there. \u201cThe Istiklal space that we’re currently in acted as an organic sanctuary due to the fact that it’s this post apocalyptic former European upper class leisure district, an abandoned Istanbul Soho of sorts,\u201d says co-founder and multidisciplinary artist Burkut Kum. \u201cAnd the very physical safety threats of the area at the time of our arrival such as bombings and so on helped Erdem Cetrez, Mithat Marul and I strengthen our micro utopian and metamodernist plot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" Left: Ramazan Can, Yukluk, 2017. Right: Emre Yusufi<\/span><\/p>\n

Another recently opened space is Lastik Project<\/a>, co-founded by artists Hyun Cho, Tom Fellows and Kerim Zapsu. \u201cBack in July 2017, with the biennial imminent, we saw an opportunity to create something ourselves without the typical restrictions a permanent space can burden you with,\u201d said Fellows. \u201cSo, we took on a short term lease and within a month we were hanging our work.\u201d Their group show “Manipulative”, which closes at the end of October, features all three Lastik Project members\u2019 work. Each artist manipulated form, material, context, process and paradigms within their work. While OJ\u2019s group show at the time of Art Week reflected on the \u201cpolitically stuck and contradictory state of the present-day Earth\u201d, and fantasised about the possibility of relocating to Mars. Curated by Erdem Cetrez, it featured an array of international artists, including Adam Stamp, Andrew Birk, Berk Cakmakci, Bora Akinciturk, Burkut Kum, Emma Stern, Huey Crowley, and Lara Joy Evans.<\/p>\n

\"\" Lastik Project<\/p>\n

\"oj Installation view from Paradise on Mats curated by Erdem Cetrez<\/p>\n

Art dealing with the current situation (albeit subtly) could also be seen in established galleries and institutions, such as Galeri Artist in Beyoglu and the Sakip Sabanci Museum. The latter will host an Ai Weiwei retrospective, mostly focused on his porcelain work, until January 2018. The Biennial (curated by Berlin-based Elmgreen and Dragset) also addressed the current climate, by reflecting on what a good neighbour and a home can mean.
\nLikewise, the Contemporary Istanbul<\/a> art fair also featured art that addressed the sensation of \u201cfeeling stuck\u201d felt across the world, and especially in Turkey. Among many of the artworks at Mixer gallery’s booth, Meltem Sahin’s piece stood out. Entitled \u201cin that case\u201d, her piece depicted three individual stylish black figures embracing themselves. Yet the work could only be fully activated when seen through an app that showed them in motion going around and around in a confined space, unable to escape. \u201cI am trying to show that people are scared and not taking action and how that\u2019s become normalised,\u201d the young artist and recent MA graduate said about the fact the art scene had split into artists who speak out and those who choose not to. \u201cI used augmented reality to show what\u2019s going on inside people\u2019s heads.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" Mixer Gallery, Meltem Sahin, in that case, 2017. Mixed media on wood, AR<\/p>\n

Contemporary Instanbul isn’t only giving a platform to many local galleries and young artists with distinct practices and opinions. It also has a fairly international outlook for a regional fair, featuring galleries from all over the world. The 60 exhibitors included Dubai\u2019s Andakulova Gallery, Accra\u2019s Gallery 1957, London\u2019s Victoria Miro, Bucharest\u2019s Nicodim Gallery, New York\u2019s Marlborough Gallery, Shanghai\u2019s ACAF, and Tbilisi\u2019s Project Artbeat.
\nSome of the local galleries included returnees ALAN, X-Ist, PG ART Gallery, Zilberman, Dirimart. Every year, the fair also offers special conditions to young galleries such as Gaia and KRANK. This year also offered plenty of novelties. Contemporary Instanbul founder Ali Gureli appointed Iranian-born and London-based collector Kamiar Maleki as the director; under his guidance, the fair got redesigned, and it offered the city its first sculpture park. In addition, it also helped build a school for Syrian refugees.
\n <\/p>\n

\"\" Left: Project Artbeat, Maka Batiashvili, Rings, 2017 Right: Gallery 1957, Gerald Chukwuma, Since Tomorrow Will Come, 2017<\/p>\n

\u201cI really want this fair to be a family affair, that\u2019s why it has this particular number of exhibitors,\u201d said Maleki. \u201cI go around the fair making sure that new galleries get to know more established ones and I only invite galleries that I know can sell here.\u201d
\nCharitable intentions aside, the fair had its eyes firmly set on one prize: to turn the city into the next global art destination. It\u2019s easy to see why. At 2am on a Sunday, Istiklal is still heaving with all sorts of people eating and drinking, the metropole keeps expanding, the high-rises grow taller, Gulf money is omnipresent. And despite the many hurdles, the art scene is finding opportunities that may arise from the tension. \u201cWe certainly believe there is a lot of potential in Istanbul,\u201d says Kum. \u201cOur young scene which craves new dialogues on contemporary art and rejects romanticising the political backdrop is also contributing to that.\u201d And because of all the above, it might just happen.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Istanbul is turning a time of tumult into an opportunity to reinvent itself<\/p>","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":58480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[9294,9442,9443,308,9444,9445,9446,38,9447,9448,9449,9450,9451,9452,9453,9454,9455,9456,9457,9458,9459,1225,9460,9461,9462,9463,9464,9465,9466,9467,9468,9469,9470,9471,9472,9473,9474,763,6159,9475,9476],"class_list":["post-58462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-15th-istanbul-biennial","tag-acaf","tag-adam-stamp","tag-ai-weiwei","tag-alan","tag-andakulova-gallery","tag-andrew-birk","tag-art","tag-berk-cakmakci","tag-bora-akinciturk","tag-burkut-kum","tag-dirimart","tag-dragset","tag-elmgreen","tag-emma-stern","tag-erdem-cetrez","tag-gaia","tag-galeri-artist","tag-gallery-1957","tag-huey-crowley","tag-hyun-cho","tag-istanbul","tag-istikla","tag-kamiar-maleki","tag-kerim-zapsu","tag-krank","tag-lara-joy-evans","tag-lastik-project","tag-marlborough-gallery","tag-meltem-sahin","tag-mithat-marul","tag-nicodim-gallery","tag-oj","tag-pg-art-gallery","tag-project-artbeat","tag-sakip-sabanci-museum","tag-tom-fellows","tag-turkey","tag-victoria-miro","tag-x-ist","tag-zilberman"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\nHow the Istanbul Art Scene Is Reinventing itself in 2017<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"After last year\u2019s setbacks, the contemporary art sector in Istanbul is once again finding its feet\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/istanbul-art-scene-biennial-2017\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How the Istanbul Art Scene Is Reinventing itself in 2017\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"After last year\u2019s setbacks, the contemporary art sector in Istanbul is once again finding its feet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/istanbul-art-scene-biennial-2017\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sleek Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sleekmag\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-10-24T16:43:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Verfasst von\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Will Furtado\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Gesch\u00e4tzte Lesezeit\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5\u00a0Minuten\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/\",\"name\":\"Sleek Magazine\",\"description\":\"Sleek is Germany\u2019s leading independent media house\/brand for creativity and innovation located in Berlin the creative capital of the world. 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