Exhibition focuses on nature

ISTANBUL

Aiming to provide a platform for new media art, Kalyon Kültür presents a group exhibition entitled “Flora” which will be on display through to May 29 at its historical venue in Istanbul’s Nişantaşı neighborhood, Taş Konak.

Curated by Ceren and Irmak Arkman, the exhibition focuses on the theme of nature and brings together world-renowned artists, including Anna Ridler, Clement Valla, François Quévillon, Mat Collishaw, Mustafa Hulusi, Pascual Sisto, Quayola, Ryoichi Kurokawa, and Sabrina Ratté, working across a variety of mediums.

The upcoming exhibition, titled “Touched by Mankind,” will be held in September, parallel to the 17th Istanbul Biennial of the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and will focus on the impact of humans on the environment.

Kalyon Kültür runs an environmental campaign in parallel to its nature themed exhibition program and donates a tree sapling for each visitor of “Flora.”

In the exhibition, British artist and researcher Ridler showcases a three screen GAN video installation entitled “Mosaic Virus (2019).” Her work reflects on the ideas around capitalism, value and collapse from different reference points in history.

New York based artist whose work considers how humans and computers are increasingly entangled in making, seeing and reading pictures, Valla invites audiences to an endless journey into a digital garden in his work “Pointcloud.garden.”

Canadian artist Quévillon’s works “Rooting: Infrastructure” and “Rooting: Le Rocher” show root systems growing in contexts that recall the complexity and resilience of living organisms.

Inspired by Albrecht Dürer’s 1503 masterpiece, “Great Piece of Turf,” world renowned British artist Collishaw brings to life this famous Dürer watercolor study in his work entitled “Whispering Weeds.”

London-based conceptual artist Hulusi uses a diverse set of mediums for his work, such as painting, photography, video and installation.

For “En Plein Air,” Spanish artist and director Sisto has sampled the organic occurring markings native to a peculiar household plant commonly known as the spotted laurel or gold dust laurel. The synthesized version of the pattern is generated by a set of algorithms that randomly arranges the golden spots in space. The golden dust pattern becomes the motif for the back gallery video installation and creates a simulated virtual environment resembling the chosen flora.

Italian Golden Nica winner, artist Quoyola, integrates close-up footage of plants, dramatically lit and filmed against a black background, with computer-generated material that explores the ambiguity of realism in the digital realm in his work entitled “Natures [Natures 1, Natures 2, Natures 3].”

Silent diptych video installation entitled “lttrans” by Kurokawa, is inspired by “laminar-turbulent transition,” the process of a laminar flow becoming turbulent that is not fully understood scientifically at this time.

Canadian artist Ratté plunges us into a speculative future, where samples of then extinct plant species are preserved and displayed in a virtual archive room. “Floralia” is a simulation of ecosystems born from the fusion of technology and organic matter, where past and future coexist in a perpetual tension of the present.

“Flora” can be visited through to May 28.