Istanbul galleries eagerly anticipate biennial

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Many Turkish galleries will be exhibiting exclusive artists for the upcoming 13th Istanbul Biennial. Galeri Manâ has announced that Turkish artist Sarkis’ solo exhibition will be featuring a new installation work, ‘Rainbow’.

There will be something for every art lover in the weeks to come in Istanbul, with galleries preparing for the upcoming 13th Istanbul Biennial with parallel events exhibiting both foreign and locally based artists.

Galeri Manâ has announced that Turkish artist Sarkis’ solo exhibition “Twin” will be featuring a new installation work, “Rainbow,” between Sept. 10 and 24. “Rainbow” settles into the universe of dualities created by Sarkis in “Twin,” bearing a movement abandoning its predetermined pattern and pointing to that which is yet to be imagined, a moment of birth in the course of history.

Along with the light emanating from “Rainbow,” the recorded sound of “7 Roulettes” (7 Rollers, 1971), a work of Sarkis from 1971, reflects on the copper surfaces staged in the exhibition and starts a new dialogue. In a setting where each floor of the gallery space acts as an original twin to the other, Rainbow adds a new layer to the experience of memory proposed by the exhibition “Twin,” at the encounter of what is perceived and what is remembered.

Since the earliest stages of his artistic practice, Sarkis has searched for an aesthetic language for the present. A constant urge to create a new language underlies Sarkis’ oeuvre, always reflective of the nature of the materials, media and sites he uses. Taking inspiration from autobiographical elements as well as art history, literature, music and film, he emphasizes the historicity and performativity of objects and sites. Through the physical, historical and conceptual encounters he stages, the artist brings new life into fixed and frozen depositories of memory.

Meanwhile, Çağla Cabaoğlu is showcasing the “Komet Momet” exhibition by Komet as Galeri Egeran presents “Reverse Corner,” a new multi-media installation by Turkish artist Işıl Eğrikavuk, winner of the 2012 Full Art Prize. Conceived in response to the recent anti-government protests that erupted throughout Turkey in late May, “Reverse Corner” builds on the artist’s previous artworks that explore the swift and uncontrollable urban transformation of Istanbul.

Francesco Albano exhibition

Foreign artists will also be on display throughout Istanbul. Galerist is presenting Francesco Albano’s third solo exhibition, “On the Eve,” from Aug. 29 to Sept. 20 at the Single Dome of Tophane-i Amire Culture and the Art Center of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.

Albano creates life-like sculptures of deformed human bodies by using wax and polyester as the main materials, manipulating primary body parts, skin and bone. He leaves the viewer with the uncanny feeling that radiates from these forms devoid of spirit and sentiment. Albano assigns skin the leading role and interprets bones as the only sculptural form inherent to the human anatomy. He uses the dramatic combination of the two to focus on the effects of social and psychological pressures on human body and on collective conscience. The relation of skin and bone parallels the polarity of night and day in these extraordinary figures, which Albano conceives with a fascination with the coexistence of such profound and conflicting notions. Twilight, the enigmatic segment of time on the eve of day and night, is a spiritual reference point for Albano’s ambivalent creations. They point to the possibility of the existence of things that are out of the scope of the rational mind. Skin is the boundary between the inside and the outside; the façade that defines the identity of the body to the external world; the hollow surface associated with feelings such as absence and desire.

Barcelona-based Tatiana Kourochkina Galeria d’Art, meanwhile, will be conducting a street show titled “Green Flower Street” in Galata starting on Sept. 12 during the first week of the biennial, running until Nov. 12.

As a tribute to Donald Fagen’s song of the same name, the exhibition is hosting a series of works that when first viewed, might not seem to contain a coherent language. However, when confronted more closely, a political connotation can be identified which tends to demonstrate that the world today is fragile with internal fractures. This approach directs the viewer to two distinct patterns; on one side the fragility of the world in which people live with all its political, humanistic, social and environmental aspects and on the other, a paradoxical regard of how it does not collapse – as if in spite of all the problems and challenges. The world is always in balance even if it seems precarious.

The exhibition represents a group of artists from different generations who embrace a range of interests and techniques, from digital technology to painting and from photography to sculpture and video installation.