Art market grows with CI Bloom

Hatice Utkan Özden

It is well known that Istanbul’s one and only art fair, Contemporary Istanbul (CI), grows each year with new plans. This year the fair invites 23 galleries to start the summer with a bloom in the market. Starting today until May 15, CI Bloom gathers 23 established galleries at Tersane Istanbul. The fair aims to energize the art scene, Contemporary Istanbul chair Ali Güreli says.

“The last two editions of Contemporary Istanbul took place during the shadow of the pandemic as we have seen many restrictions, yet I think we have also proved we are capable of hosting two different art fairs in Istanbul,” Güreli said, noting that Turkey’s art market is strong and that it is getting stronger each day.

Suzan Sabancı Dinçer, the chairman of Akbank and the Executive Advisory Board and member of the board of patrons of the Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair, said: “I believe CI Bloom will be a new experience for all art lovers. Contemporary Istanbul will keep on representing Istanbul and our country in the world in the best way they can.”

20 selected NFTs

CI Bloom will also be hosting an NFT exhibition, curated by MoCDA: Museum of Contemporary Digital Art. “Digital Horizons: The New State of the Art” is a group show featuring 20 NFTs selected in collaboration with international art collectors. The display aims at presenting the state of contemporary digital art by looking at the pivotal roles played by Collectibles and Fine Art NFTs in the understanding and popularization of collecting digital art.

The broad adoption of NFTs has radically changed the conventional ways of making, enjoying and collecting art in the past 18 months. By proving to be a stable alternative to the traditional art trade platforms, NFTs and blockchain-based technologies have been met with enthusiasm and curiosity by artists, collectors and galleries.

Alongside the expert artists who have made works with digital tools long before the blockchain, an exciting new generation of creatives uses NFTs to reach collectors, galleries and museums.

The artworks made to be traded and collected on the blockchain provoke the contemporary art connoisseur by looking at digital culture and computer science as their prime source of inspiration. If the colorful style of XCOPY shares an underlying interest in the fast-paced rhythm of online life, Pak’s works propose a creative approach to math and numbers. Mario Klingemann and Sofia Crespo explore the creative potential of Artificial Intelligence with works delving deep into the wildest dreams of machines. Martin Lukas Ostachowski and Oficinas TK collaborated to examine the sculptural quality of the digital mediascape, the same that led Sarah Zucker to develop an art style inspired by the almost otherworldly omnipresent presence of screens in our life Zucker’s interest in pop culture is shared with Beeple, whose works act as modern twists on the memento mori formula, imagining popular pop icons rotting in a not-so-distant future.

The psychological effect of being connected online 24/7 is at the center of Mark Inducil’s research, resulting in eye-catching digital animations depicting what it means to live a life when IRL and URL experiences overlap with each other. Damien Hirst questions the connection between digital and physical artifacts with a collection of NFTs corresponding to unique physical artworks which are stored in a secure vault in the U.K.

Sculptor Hande Şekerciler and digital artist Arda Yalkın, the Turkish artist duo ha:ar, combine a traditional approach to making art with new technologies, mixing physical sculpting and 3D modeling to make hybrid works that fall within the liminal space in between art definitions.