Arter announces 2022 program

ISTANBUL

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A subsidiary of the Vehbi Koç Foundation, Arter continues its multidisciplinary program comprised of exhibitions, events, learning, and publications at its building in Istanbul.

As of Feb. 17, a group exhibition entitled “ThisPlay,” curated by Emre Baykal from the Arter Collection, will revolve around childhood. The exhibition will explore the liberating aspect of play, its defiant capacity to suspend and reconstruct reality, and the ways it transcends the humdrum of daily life to create unique systems and structures of meaning of its own, within the context of artworks, and the experiences they offer.

Approaching art both as a maker and breaker of play through concepts such as competition, tension, chance, imitation, ritual, magic, trance and pleasure, the exhibition will open up space for play for both adults and children where there is no winner or everyone wins.

The world premiere of a sound/video installation commissioned by Arter from Bill Fontana, entitled “Resounding Io” will be presented as of March 10 as the fifth edition of “Sound Art Projects” series under the curation of Arter’s Founding Director Melih Fereli.

Based on research surveys conducted by Fontana with a portable recording studio consisting of an eight-channel digital recorder, acoustic microphones, hydrophones and accelerometers, whereby the artist made video and sound recordings, some underwater, at numerous locations along the Bosphorus, as well as in two Byzantine cisterns, namely the Theodosius “Şerefiye” (built by Emperor Theodosius II between 428 and 443) and the Basilica “Yerebatan” (built by Emperor Justinian I between 527 and 565), the installation titled “Resounding Io” will welcome visitors.

Taking full advantage of the advanced technical features of Arter’s Karbon, the multi-screen and multi-channel work produced as an addition to the artist’s ongoing series “Acoustical Visions” will create a sensual and dynamic world where visitors are invited to participate in an immersive experience through audio-visual compositions.

The spring season will also feature the group exhibition “Locus Solus” that brings together a selection of works from the Arter Collection with site-specific new productions and existing works.

Devised around the concept of nature, the exhibition will invite the audience on a journey through subterranean, heavenly and terrestrial realms, subconscious territories, past and lost or fantasized and never-existed places and various landscapes.

Curated by Selen Ansen, Locus Solus will aim at rethinking the relationships between the mineral, vegetal, animal and human lives, and the ways in which nature and culture permeate each other. The works will propose reflecting upon nature as a cultural and historical construction nourished and shaped by mythologies, collective beliefs and rituals, individual stories and experiences, social fears, and desires. It will be on view as of March 31.

The gallery will welcome the summer of 2022 with two new exhibitions. As of May 19, Ahmet Doğu İpek’s solo exhibition will gather the artist’s drawings, paintings and installations produced for the exhibition at Arter. The works that took shape during the past two years will reflect this period’s climate resulting from macro and micro phenomena by abstracting it.

A group exhibition focusing on the theme of sleep will also welcome visitors as of May 19. The exhibition will present various perspectives on this seemingly static, mysterious resting state, characterized by altered cognitive processes and reduced physical activity, as well as being considered an indispensable part of the lives of all living beings.

Arter also continues to present a multi-disciplinary events program featuring innovative examples of performing arts, classical, contemporary and electronic music, film, performance and digital arts.

On Feb. 25, 26 and 27, the third and digital edition of “The New and Newest Music Festival,” curated by Matthias Osterwold, will present talks, workshops and screenings as well as performances in dialogue with Arter’s exhibitions.