Moving Image offers new media tour of Istanbul

Hatice Utkan Özden - ISTANBUL

Hsu Che-Yu "November 11th, 1970" 2012, Courtesy of Vanguard Gallery (Shangai, China)

This year Moving Image is presenting single-channel works and major installations from 20 artists during the Art International fair. Speaking about the fair and its new developments, co-founder Murat Orozobekov said, “This year we hope to see even more people stop in the fair. We know there are many events happening in Istanbul that week, but we have trimmed down the number of artists in this edition, focusing on quality, but also aware of how much the art world has to choose from in Istanbul this week. Our constant goal is to raise awareness of the great work contemporary artists are creating in moving-image based media.”

Orozobekov and his partner, Edward Winkleman (the duo also owns the Winkleman Gallery in New York’s Chelsea), aim to attract more people to Moving Image this year. It is a well-known fact that Turkey has some new media collectors and this is an asset for the art scene. Speaking on specific reasons why Moving Image chose Istanbul, Orozobekov said, “We have been interested in the Istanbul art scene for a number of years. Its geographical location - between Europe and Asia - is ideal for our international objectives, and there are a large percentage of contemporary art collectors in Turkey who focus on film and video compared with most other major art centers.”


Currently happening only in London, New York and Istanbul, Moving Image aims high when it comes to its future expectations. Orozobekov said last year’s edition in Istanbul was a success. “The dealers seemed very happy with the outcomes, and we were made to feel very welcome by the contemporary art community in Istanbul,” he added. This year, Orozobekov and Winkleman are looking forward to building upon their initial success in Istanbul. There seems to be a very special relationship between video art and Turkey in general, as quite a large number of Turkey’s important contemporary artist work in the medium, he said, adding, “They have also begun exploring other locations, including Sao Paolo, Los Angeles, or Hong Kong, but as of yet we have no announcements to make regarding this.” 

Moving Image aims to welcome everyone who is interested in film and video art. On the other hand, Orozobekov said, Moving Image is a commercial art fair and the primary goal is to help dealers sell video art to collectors and institutions. “But our parallel goals are education and experimentation with how video can be better presented within the art fair context,” he added.



For both Orozobekov and Winkleman, two experiences in their gallery prompted them to begin Moving Image. “First was that we had brought three videos to an art fair in London once when a major New York art critic walked past our booth and said, ‘I don’t watch videos at art fairs. I don’t have time.’ Because more and more of the sales that any gallery makes happen at art fairs, we saw this as a challenge,” Orozobekov said.
 
According to Orozobekov, if people didn’t feel they had time to watch video at a traditional fair, then someone needed to begin a fair that created an atmosphere in which they did feel they had the time. “We have been experimenting with ways to send that signal ‘take your time’ since we launched Moving Image in 2011,” he said. The other experience was the exhibition “California Video” that they saw at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2008. The curator for that exhibition, Glenn Phillips, had included a wide range of videos into a medium-sized space through some very inventive installation ideas. Orozobekov and Winkleman took a good deal of notes at that exhibition and have been trying to incorporate the best of them in each edition of Moving Image.

The fair opens on Sept. 5 at the Haliç Congress Center.