Tag: Istanbul Biennial

  • Haute Living Reports From Istanbul: A Modern Design Mecca

    Haute Living Reports From Istanbul: A Modern Design Mecca

    On the surface Istanbul, Turkey, is a place filled with sights, smells, tastes and textures so unfamiliar to visitors that they seem mystical, almost magical. After even the briefest of stays, visitors come to realize the people and culture of this city is intoxicating. Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, is a city steeped in centuries-old Ottoman lore juxtaposed against a very modern irritability. It is a celebration of old versus new, where change is taking place an incredible pace.

    Sadullah Cekmece1

    The world has taken notice; Istanbul is asserting itself. As in many cities where unrest or discontent simmers, there is conversely a blossoming creative underbelly. Visitors need look no further than Orhan Pamuk’s book The Museum of Innocence. Pamuk is easily Turkey’s greatest modern literally export. His book and museum of the same name were conceived simultaneously, a work so dense and meticulous it echoes the rich creative tapestry that defines Turkish society. But this is just the beginning; to get a true understanding one must take in the broader artistic landscape.

    That’s exactly what the organizers of the first-ever Istanbul Design Biennial hope to do, exhibiting varied works which introduce viewers to the “messy reality of everyday life.” As part of the Biennial, exhibits have popped up all across Istanbul’s city center, including notable installations like Musibet at the Istanbul Modern Museum and Adhocracy at the Galata Greek School. Both projects shed light on the rapidly transforming urban, social, and cultural conditions that define the city while giving viewers a rare opportunity to explore the very spaces in question.

    Traveling around the city, one realizes that Istanbul exhibits a craftsmanship which no longer exists within Western culture. Digging through treasures in the bazaars or sipping fresh pomegranite juice while weaving through the hilly roads; stumbling across a woodworking shop where father and son still work side-by-side; discovering unique lighting shops with prices so cheap that customs and shipping charges suddenly seem reasonable…

    Luckily, the Biennial’s organizers grasped early on that in order to truly appreciate Istanbul, replete with both beauty and imperfections, you must explore its borders. Eight different Design Walks have been organized, each with a unique theme, ranging from an exploration of different designers (from fashion to landscaping) to historical neighborhoods, temples, architecture, and of course the Grand Bazaar.

    Whether you make it to Istanbul during the Biennial or later, our highlights from the Design Walks shouldn’t be missed on your next visit to this incredible destination.

    For women’s fashion: Bahar Korçan

    Serdar-i Ekrem Caddesi, Seraskerci Sok. 5, Galata, Istanbul, 0 (212) 243-7320

    For handmade wooden furniture: Stoa

    Hayriye Caddesi No. 18/1, Istanbul, 0 (212) 251-4098

    For one-of-a-kind tiles and ceramics: Sadullah Cekmece

    Hacımimi Mah. Serdar-ı Ekrem Sk. No:38/1 Galata, İstanbul, 0 (212) 293-3661

    For modern lighting: Hüseyin Turgut

    Hacı Mimi Mah, Ali Hoca Sokak, No:20 / C, Beyoğlu, Istanbul, 0 (212) 245-7826

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    Hüseyin Turgut

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    Bahar Korçan fashion designer

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    Stoa

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    The Istanbul Design Biennal runs until December 12, 2012. For more information, please visit the exhibit’s website.

    by Casey Gillespie November 19, 2012 12:41 PM

    Read 159 Times

    via Haute Living Reports From Istanbul: A Modern Design Mecca | Haute Living.

  • Istanbul Biennial THE BIENNIAL AS CURATORIUM by Patricia Watts

    Istanbul Biennial THE BIENNIAL AS CURATORIUM by Patricia Watts

    The 12th Istanbul Biennial, September 2011
    Gathering for the press conference for the 12th Istantul Biennial, Sept. 15, 2011
    Istanbul Biennial curators Jens Hoffmann, left, and Adriano Pedrosa
    The exhibition spaces at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011, designed by Japanese architect Ryue Nishizawa
    Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Death by Gun), 1990, Museum of Modern Art
    At the Istanbul Biennial 2011: “Untitled” (Death by Gun), 2011, installation photo by Natalie Barki
    At the Istanbul Biennial 2011: “Untitled” (Passport), 2011, installation photo by Natalie Barki
    Vesna Pavlovic, Search for Landscapes (Projectors), 2001, at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011
    Vesna Pavlovic, Search for Landscapes (Projectors), 2001, at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011
    Tamas Kaszas and Aniko Lorant, Broadband Bulletin Board, 1998-2009, at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011
    Dani Gal, Historical Record Archive, 2005-ongoing, at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011
    Ali Kazma, O.K., 2010, at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011
    Wael Shawky, Cabaret Crusades. The Horror Show File, installation view at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011
    Ala Younis, Tin Soldiers, 2010-11, at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011
    Kristen Morgin, The Third of May, 2011, at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011, photo by Natalie Barki
    Mona Hatoum, Afghan (Black and Red), 2009, at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011
    Hank Willis Thomas, I Am a Man, 2009, at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011
    Ahmet Ogut, Perfect Lovers, 2008, installed at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011
    Rivane Neuenschwander, At a Certain Distance (Public  Barriers), 2010, at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011
    Renata Lucas, Failure, 2003, at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011
    Wilfredo Prieto, Politically Correct, 2009, at the 12th Istanbul Biennial 2011, photo by Natalie Barki

     

    Istanbul Biennial

    THE BIENNIAL AS CURATORIUM
    by Patricia Watts

     

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    This year’s 12th edition of the Istanbul Biennial (Sept. 17-Nov. 13, 2011), designated “Untitled,” is likely to disappoint — that is, if you are looking for what we might expect from a biennial: a large, open-ended survey of recent global contemporary art. What you will see instead is actually akin to a museum exhibition, a focused, thematic and interpreted group of artworks — a curatorium, if you will — and as such, it is a bold (if problematic) move on the part of co-curators Jens Hoffman, director of San Francisco’s Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, and Adriano Pedrosa, an independent curator based in São Paulo.

    The show these curators did assemble can be seen, when considered on its own terms, as intellectually rigorous and provocative. Yet, presented as a biennial, it comes across as a highly confining exhibition experience with thematic narratives structured around the work of a deceased artist — Felix Gonzalez-Torres — who is not even included the exhibition. What? This “ghost in the shadows” approach does not leave much room for the “open interpretation” that the curators themselves have stated as their goal for the biennial.

    The show draws attention to its own exhibition design, by the architectural office of Ryue Nishizawa in Japan, a nicely done series of white-box viewing spaces, stretching into the distance, each room separated from the other and wrapped with an exterior of corrugated steel siding. The Istanbul Biennial has over 50 solo presentations and five group exhibitions in two buildings at one location — Antrepo on the waterfront in Karaköy and, next door to it, the Istanbul Modern.

    As I’ve mentioned, this non-biennial is structured around concepts and esthetics embodied in the work of Cuban American Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996), and the curators have named the five group exhibitions, with titles such as “Untitled (Death by Gun)”and “Untitled (Passport),”after particular artworks of his, with their themes of gay love, sexuality and loss, and the critical and creative possibilities for understanding history.

    Even if you are familiar with the work of Gonzalez-Torres (who was included posthumously in the 1997 Istanbul Biennial), you might wonder: Why? Why him? And how does using his work as a point of reference illuminate today’s contemporary art practices?

    Just the same (considering the show we have rather than one we might expect), the curators have used the framework of Gonzales-Torres’ work quite effectively as a lens to focus on Latin American, Eastern European and Middle Eastern artists with an emphasis on the political (social, geographical, cultural). Through this means, they have created a curious, and even haunting, departure from the biennial format that leads the viewer on a poetic treasure hunt for some important historical artworks, by Tina Modotti, Martha Rosler, Elizabeth Catlett and Chris Burden, among others.

    As for our expectation that a biennial will give us a cross section of cutting-edge contemporary art, approximately 20 of the installations were commissioned specifically for this edition. But at least 30 works were made before 1999, and some pieces have already been seen in other biennials of recent and not-so-recent years. Newell Harry’s Untitled (Gift Mats) in the 2010 Sydney Biennial, for instance, and Catherine Opie’s Surfers in the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

    And as for our expectation of a global representation, the show includes no Chinese artists, only one East Asian, and a handful of Americans. So this homage exhibition was really designed, instead, to showcase artworks with esthetic strategies similar to those used by Gonzalez-Torres — minimalist and poetic works, a love story, a memorial and works that incorporate his noted takeaways.

    Rather than discussing art from within the framework that the curators have imposed on viewers, I am simply going to summarize some of my favorites, biennial style.

    New kid on the block from Belgrade, Serbia (schooled in the U.S. and now teaching photography at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University), is Vesna Pavlovic. Her installation Search for Landscapes (2011), commissioned for the biennial, is an anthropological study presented as a vintage slide show. With multiple screens and projectors, the work cycles through images from one family’s travels around the world in the 1960s — using a recently outdated medium to examine historic landscapes from the period of its mass popularity.

    The show features several other collections or ephemera-based works, including Hungarian artists Tamás Kaszás and Anikó Loránt’s Broadband Bulletin Board (1998–2009), a wooden structure housing broadsides, drawings and videos of propaganda espousing a bohemian utopian lifestyle. Also, Historical Records Archives (2005–ongoing), assembled by Israeli artist Dani Gal, is a collection of vinyl record albums presented as objects (no sound), including political speeches and other historical events with orations by Martin Luther King, JFK, Hitler and Lenin.

    Los Angeles artist Mungo Thomson‘s 2010 video Untitled (TIME) encapsulates history in a rapid sequence of all the covers of Time magazine from 1923 to 2010. A century passes by your eyes in two minutes in this compressed succession of famous people and world leaders. And, from Istanbul, Ali Kazma‘s video O.K. (2010) captures a government clerk fiercely stamping documents with such intensity and speed that time and space themselves seem to be distorted.

    Perhaps the most provocative work in the biennial is Egyptian artist Wael Shawky’s Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Show File (2010). This 30-minute video, made with 200-year-old marionettes from the Lupi Collection in Turin, gives us the story of the First Crusade of 1096–1099, a military expedition by western Christianity to regain the Holy Lands, told from the perspectives of Arab historians in Arabic with English subtitles. The film opens with a scene of the plague in Constantinople and goes on to display the bloody battles and civilian massacres, showing us religious war from a peasant’s perspective. The antique marionettes, dressed as Christians and Muslims, present a story that is evocative and telling — a horror show of subjugation despite the beauty of the handcrafted figures, filmic lighting and sets.

    Two other impressive war-related works include Ala Younis’ Tin Soldiers (2010–11) and Kristen Morgin’s The Third Day of May (2011). Younis, who lives in Amman, Jordan, and was born in Kuwait City, presents, on top of a massive table, 12,235 custom-made tin soldiers, produced in numbers proportional to the numbers of active troops in 2010. The soldiers are re-creations of toys that children of noble households are given to prepare them for future rule, fitted with military outfits of Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Turkey. This work brings home the scale of current militarization in the Arab World.

    The Los Angeles-based Morgin, by contrast, makes her own hand-sculpted and painted clay figurines and constructs 3D version of the famous 1814 painting by Francisco Goya of the execution of a Spanish citizen near Madrid. With equal impact, both works address war and death by gun from a childlike perspective.

    Afghan (Black and Red) of 2009 by Mona Hatoum, the Palestinian sculptor and installation artist who lives in Berlin and London, transforms an afghan rug by cutting out threads in the shape of the Peters Project world map, introduced in 1973 to render a round world on a flat surface, giving a new world view. New York artist Hank Willis Thomas, who lives in Paris, presented I Am a Man, addressing identity politics and referencing the U.S. Constitution, which in 1787, during the slavery era, deemed the African American essentially three-fifths of a man for tax purposes. Included were twenty small paintings with statements like: I AM A MAN, A MAN I AM, WHAT A MAN, I AM YOUR MAN, I AM HUMAN.

    One work, created in honor of Felix Gonzalez-Torres by Turkish artist Ahmet Öǧüt, who lives in Amsterdam, is Perfect Lovers (2008). The artist presents two coins (a euro and a Turkish coin) as precious objects in a vitrine on black velvet, like social readymades. While almost identical formally, the coins have different monetary values. The work mimics Gonzalez-Torres’ artwork (of the same title) that presents two wall clocks working in perfect unison. Both artists highlight the potential contrasts between two seemingly similar realities.

    The most oddly sited work in the show was the multi-part deconstructive fencing that appeared in a few locations, both inside and outside the white cubes, in both buildings on separate floors. Unlabeled and providing an esthetic demarcation, the fences appeared to constitute a carelessly placed and inappropriate exhibition design feature. Yet, after further investigation, I learned that that the wood, wire and cement barriers were Rivane Neuenschwander’s work At a Certain Distance (Public Barriers) (2010). What a relief — rather than intrusive and ill-placed exhibition elements, they turned out to be interesting and intentionally disruptive interventions.

    The show also boasts a potentially dangerous interactive work by Brazilian artist Renata Lucas, entitled Falha (Failure) (2003–11), which at first appeared like an exhibit at a children’s museum. This wall-to-wall large room installation was an obstacle course of hinged plywood sheets with handles, designed to be lifted and lowered, thereby allowing visitors to reconfigure the space. These metaphorical portals, which were almost impossible to move without potentially hurting yourself, seemed awkwardly appropriate for its given title.

    Another oddity is Cuban artist Wilfredo Prieto’s Politically Correct (2009), a minimalist cubed watermelon sitting on the floor seeping juices. The sculpture seems discourteous to the biennial staff, which has to replace it almost daily and deal with any insects or animals it might attract. But I suppose it references Gonzales-Torres’ celebrated candy spills, in which cellophane-wrapped sweets are neatly piled in the corner or spread out on the floor of the gallery. Both works definitely exemplify the transformation of the everyday into a meditation on love and loss, figuratively and literally. The ghost of F.G.T. lives on.

    Overall it was a thoughtful and methodically crafted exhibition. The works were both esthetically and politically engaging. Complicated, yes. Was it a traditional biennial? No. But it does have enough new work from an international representation of artists to keep a visitor interested. And, an added bonus — the Istanbul Biennial is sited in one of the world’s most beautiful and enduring cities, aptly known as a cradle of civilization. While viewers may find it’s organization odd, it is hard to be critical of such a sophisticated and rewarding show.

    PATRICIA WATTS, an independent curator, was formerly chief curator at the Sonoma County Museum in northern California. She has been a curator for ecoartspace since 1999.

    http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/watts/2011-istanbul-biennial.asp

     

    2011 istanbul biennial 7

  • Shooting blanks in Istanbul

    Shooting blanks in Istanbul

    By Kaelen Wilson-Goldie

    The Daily Star

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    ISTANBUL: Whoever took the job of curating the 12th Istanbul Biennial was guaranteed to have a hard time pulling off an exhibition as powerful or memorable as the 11th.

    Two years ago, the Croatian collective WHW used the biennial as an occasion to propose – and then try to prove – that art could redress the gross inequities of late capitalism, retrieve the lost promises of communism, expose exploitation, resist occupation and find some measure of personal and collective fulfillment in 21st-century life.

    WHW’s exhibition, named “What Keeps Mankind Alive?” after a lyric from Bertolt Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera,” was conceived as a full-fledged, left-leaning political program. It was brash, stubborn and heavy-handed. It was as if the curators thought they could change the world.

    Much of the work was didactic, but WHW’s biennial was a complicated beast. It crashed around the stuff of propaganda, but it also took delicate and nimble turns. One of the most enduring facets of the exhibition was its attention to the labor of art – for those who make it and those who engage it – as both a solitary struggle and a potentially regenerative act.

    Now the curators Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffmann have stepped into WHW’s formidable shoes. Their exhibition, titled “Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial),” opened to the public Saturday as a literal and willful return to form.

    “Istanbul has become important as a critical, experimental, research-based biennial,” says Pedrosa, an independent curator based in Sao Paulo. “From looking at the last few editions, there seemed to be an emphasis on art and politics, but there also seemed to be a certain disregard for aesthetic form,” not only in Istanbul, he explained, but in a rash of other politically minded exhibitions taking place over the last twenty years.

    “The way curatorial practice has developed, curators are bringing in other things to look at political issues through art,” says Hoffmann, director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. While others have turned to literature, philosophy, critical theory or an activist agenda, Pedrosa and Hoffmann have hinged their biennial on the sensibility of a single artist.

    Felix Gonzales-Torres, who died in1996, was known (and almost unconditionally adored) for his eloquent and ephemeral gestures. He made piles of candy and stacks of paper for people to take and keep. He put a photograph of an empty, unmade bed on a public billboard, strung up light bulbs, hung diaphanous curtains and placed two synchronized clocks side by side.

    Gonzalez-Torres left almost all of his works untitled, followed by parenthetical words or phrases that conveyed undercurrents of violence and sorrow. Some of the pieces were inconsolable, dealing with the illness, death and absence of his lover. Others pointedly critiqued guns in America, the Reagan Administration’s criminal neglect of the AIDS crisis and the ravaging physical effects of the disease.

    None of Gonzalez-Torres’ works are in the biennial itself – Pedrosa and Hoffmann argue that he constitutes “a disembodied presence” – but the show is named for him and structured around five actual or approximate examples of his work: “Untitled (Abstraction),” “Untitled (Ross),” “Untitled (Passport),” “Untitled (History)” and “Untitled (Death by Gun).” He has become, here, something of a fixed curatorial framework.

    “His works have a certain sensibility and elegance,” says Hoffmann. “They don’t punch you in the face and they aren’t spoon-feeding you messages.”

    The Istanbul Biennial has long been the most serious and professional event of its kind in the region. With the Sharjah Biennial looking a little unsteady, the Marrakech Biennale still untested and the Cairo and Alexandria Biennials in terminal decline (with or without a revolution), Istanbul may soon become the only one that counts.

    Fitfully, since 2005, it has also become a solid platform for artists from the Middle East. For this edition, the Ford Foundation gave the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, which organizes the biennial, a grant of $50,000 to support the participation of Arab artists – the argument being that no one else will.

    The greatest strength of “Untitled” is that it does not corral the usual suspects, and that applies equally to artists from the region. Mona Hatoum, Akram Zaatari, Wael Shawky, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige are there, but so too are Bisan Abu-Eisheh, Marwa Arsanios, Ala Younis, Charbel-Joseph H. Boutros, George Awde, Rula Halawani and Shuruq Harb.

    Palestine is as ubiquitous a disembodied presence as Gonzalez-Torres.

    With five group shows and more than fifty solo presentations spread across three floors in two old customs warehouses, the biennial is remarkably self-contained. It feels institutional, refined, museum-like and controlled.

    Each of the solo artists is installed in his or her own room. Jonathas de Andrade’s “Tropical Hangover,” 101 photographs of Recife in Brazil coupled with 140 pages from a manic found diary that swings from sexual adventure to God and despair, fills a long and spacious hallway, giving the works room to breathe. Thirteen gorgeous photographs by Tina Modotti are pulled together in an intimate chamber. But overall, the layout feels uniform and systematic.

    The group shows are also incredibly literal with their themes. Walk into “Untitled (History)” and you find books and timelines and documents redacted to a decorative extreme. Walk into “Untitled (Passport)” and you find luggage, maps, visa application forms and, of course, passports.

    “Untitled (Abstraction)” is lined with modernist grids, whether made out of Mona Hatoum’s hair or cut up stills from the film “Lasting Images” by Hadjithomas and Joreige. The latter is problematic in that “Lasting Images,” as a film, is haunting and visceral. “180 Seconds from Lasting Images” reworks the piece into wall décor.

     

    Not every selection in the exhibition feels equally astute.

     

    Pedrosa and Hoffmann’s structure is certainly crisp and clever but it does not necessarily justify its own existence. It may be a beautifully made exhibition, but does it need to be a biennial? You could move it anywhere in the world, tour it like an enormous museum show, or break it down into a year’s worth of programming.

     

    WHW may have been strident, but they took risks and staked out positions and courted the dangers of being naïve, hopeful, furious, of claiming an urgency for art and failing to meet its challenges, of reviving a tired ideology instead of coming up with something new or unknown.

     

    “Untitled” is, by contrast, smooth, steady and heavily scripted. The show ends with bang in “Untitled (Death by Gun),” but it feels like a one liner.

     

    You’re in a room with Mathew Brady’s photographs of dead bodies in the American Civil War, Weegee’s photographs of dead bodies in New York, Eddie Adams’ sequence of a street assassination in Vietnam.

     

    There are guns and bullets everywhere, along with Mat Collishaw’s knife-wound as vagina-like bullet hole.

     

    Goya’s “The Third of May” is replicated in clay figurines on the floor, a chalked-in toy train track looping figure eights around them.

     

    On a screen in the corner, a little girl walks down a wooded path, playing hide and seek with two little twerps. One of them shoots her in the shoulder and she slumps to the ground. The video loops and you hear the shot over and over. Maybe the first time you wince. After that, nothing. It’s just a cheeky, anodyne detail.

     

    “Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial)” runs through November 13. For more information, please see www.iksv.org

     

    A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on September 21, 2011, on page 16.

     

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    (The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)