ISTANBUL
MODERN: THE SYMPHONY OF COLOURS
DESIGN BY
RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP
ISTANBUL MODERN MUSEUM DESIGN BY RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP
Istanbul Modern was founded in 2004 as Türkiye’s first
museum of modern and contemporary art. The new museum designed by Renzo Piano
Building Workshop replaces the original museum building at the same location,
an old customs warehouse on the Bosphorus waterfront.
The new waterfront promenade, previously inaccessible to the
public, gives visitors the opportunity to gaze across the water towards the
Anatolian side, Princes’ Islands and the Historical Peninsula from this unique
viewpoint. The design of the new building was inspired by the glittering waters
and light reflections of the Bosphorus. A transparent ground floor strengthens
the connection at this exceptional site between the waterfront and Tophane
Park.
At ground level, the circular columns and round mechanical
funnels form an architectural landscape. The round shapes of these structural
elements soften the transition between light and shadow and create a bright and
safe environment by removing the sharp division between light and dark.
A café, museum shop, library, information points and
educational workshop spaces are located on the ground floor next to the main
lobby. A transparent glass security fence under the main body of the building
protects the external sculpture terrace and educational spaces for children
workshops.
The public areas of the museum are connected by a wide
central stairway suspended in a large void in the center of the lobby. From the
ground floor lobby, the stairs provide access to a 156-seat auditorium on an
underground mezzanine. Photography and pop-up galleries are located on the
first floor, as are staff offices, education and event rooms. Restaurant on the
south façade has an outdoor terrace with views toward the sea.
All lobby spaces on upper levels give visitors a view of
both the park and water, maintaining a visual connection to the surroundings.
This also helps visitors orientate themselves through the building.
The second floor houses permanent and temporary exhibition
galleries, where also astaircase leads to a glass lantern opening onto a
rooftop viewing terrace that hovers above a shallow plane of water spread
across the entire roof. A metaphysical connection is created by the reflections
of the city on both the water feature and the sea, which merge into one.
Construction of the new building was made possible by the
joint contributions of the Eczacıbaşı Group, the museum’s founding sponsor, and
Doğuş Group-Bilgili Holding, the museum’s main sponsor.
https://www.istanbulmodern.org/en/museum/istanbul-modern-is-open-to-visitors_3257.html
MARK
BRADFORD, 1961
Horrible
Shark, 2011
Mixed Media
on Canvas
Dimensions: 260 x 366 cm.
Private Collection
Long Term Loan
Born in 1961 in Los
Angeles, Mark Bradford studied at the California Institute of the Arts, earning
his BFA in 1995 and his MFA in 1997.
Before studying art
Bradford worked with his mother who was a hairdresser. Later he used the tools
of this trade in his work and began making collages with found materials. In
his early work the artist treated of the contemporary issues of his community
and earned acclaim with collages made of hair salon materials such as
permanent-wave end papers or hairspray. Because he usually tackles subjects
such as gender identity, social class division, migration, and racism in
American life, he uses printed materials about his topic such as posters and
flyers. Featured in many international biennials and exhibitions, Bradford
focuses on oil painting and collage though recently he has expanded his
practice into photography, video, sculpture, and site-specific installations.
https://www.istanbulmodern.org/en/collection/collection/5?t=3&id=1203
ANSELM
KIEFER, 1945
Morgenthau
Plan, 2012
Acrylic,
Emulsion, Oil and Shellac on Photograph Mounted on Canvas
Dimensions:
380 x 380 cm
Private Collection
Long Term
Loan
Anselm Kiefer was born in
1945, during the last days of the Third Reich, in Donaueschingen, in southern
Germany. Having grown up in divided post-war Germany, Kiefer first studied law,
literature, and linguistics, then art at the academies in Karlsruhe and
Düsseldorf. The artist lived in Germany until 1993, after which he moved his
home and studio to France. As an artist whose first toys were bricks from the
ruined buildings around his home following World War II, Kiefer begins his work
by exploring what is closest to him. His points of departure are always based
on his own narrative and the grand narratives of Germany’s past, which he
believes are intertwined.
This work called
“Morgenthau Plan” is from a series of the same title and takes its name from
The Morgenthau Plan proposed by the USA in 1944 aimed to convert post-war
Germany into an agricultural country rather than an industrial one. As
leitmotifs, the flowers concealed in the background or openly displayed on the
surface refer to the ideal of a pastoral Germany with its agricultural fields
and an increasing amount of farmland just prior to post-war industrial
development.
https://www.istanbulmodern.org/en/collection/collection/5
GEORG
BASELITZ, 1938
Aus
Gelbrotorange wird Blaudunkel, 2012
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions:
290 x 208 cm
Private
Collection
Long Term
Loan
Hans-Georg Kern was born
in 1938 in Germany. After the fall of Nazi Germany he adopted the name Georg
Baselitz in tribute to his home town of Deutschbaselitz. While studying at
various academies in Berlin, he closely followed Dadaists, Surrealists and
other European artists. His works are influenced by 16th century traditional
German woodcuts, indigenous sculptures of Africa, the theories of Wassily
Kandinsky and Kasimir Malevich, and the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche,
Charles Baudelaire, Comte de Lautréamont and Antonin Artaud. In 1961 and 1962
he published a manifesto entitled Pandämonium. Having proved his mastery in
engraving, the artist treats his subjects within a symbolic context. These
subjects include the body and sexual images, and personal, expressive figures
rooted in Art Brut and psychotic art. Adopting an attitude opposed to the the
ordinary, the artist conveys the hardships of the Nazi era in his works about
German history through ruins, rebels, shepherds, trees and other figures. These
forms in his paintings reproduce the image of melancholy and eliminate the
feeling of pity. Through the material he uses and the tension he creates in
content and composition, he calls into question the human condition.
Baselitz’s work “Aus
Gelbrotorange wird Blaudunkel”, features the deformed, upside-down images
created with strong brush strokes that appear again and again in his work as a
reaction to past tribulations and his constructed pessimism of the present.
https://www.istanbulmodern.org/en/collection/collection/5
BURHAN DOĞANÇAY
Magnificent Age, 1987 (Detail)
BURHAN DOĞANÇAY
Magnificent Age, 1987 (Detail)
BURHAN
DOĞANÇAY
Magnificent
Age, 1987
Acrylic,
Collage, Gouache and Fumage on Canvas
Dimensions: 162 x 361 x 9 cm
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection
Eczacıbaşı Group Donation
Burhan Doğançay received
his first training in art from his father Adil Doğançay and from the artist
Arif Kaptan. He continued to study and practice art at the same time as he was
studying for a degree in law from Ankara University and a doctorate in
economics from the University of Paris. Despite a common misconception, Burhan
Doğançay’s approach to art is not purely abstract. He makes marks and signs of
humanity his point of departure, reiterating them in his canvases and
intervening in them as either a participant or a bystander. He is particularly
attracted to walls because of their stratified record of human life; their
layered messages to society communicated in different materials and by
different methods; and because of the unpredictable, corrosive effects that
time and nature may have on their visual evidence. Advertising, political
posters, graffiti and street art, and censorship, constantly change the
landscape of a city’s walls. What particularly fascinates Doğançay is the
conflict and the quest for communication between individuals, establishment
institutions, the physical construct of a city, and nature. This is why we must
regard Burhan Doğançay’s work not as “abstract art” but rather as art that is
emotional, social, and political. "Magnificent Age", one of three
striking examples from Doğançay’s "Cones" series (the other two
being "Symphony in Blue" and "Mimar Sinan") was
produced from the pages of newspapers and magazines about Ottoman art.
SEYHUN TOPUZ,
1942
Red V, 2005
Fibreglass
Dimensions: 137 x 185 x 115 cm
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection
Eczacıbaşı Group Donation
Seyhun Topuz graduated in
1971 from the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied sculpture.
She continued her studies in New York from 1978-1980 and from 1983-1984.Since
the early 1980s, Seyhun Topuz has been using sculpture to make
geometric-abstract statements. Her designs are made of forms that are not found
in nature, but are rather shaped by notions of mathematical order and
precision. They belong to a world conceived of by the intellect. In works
exhibiting the utmost economy in terms of both form and material, Topuz devises
idealized structures capable of enduring in the face of changes taking place in
the world around them. Both intellectually and artistically she adheres closely
to Minimalism as it applies to contemporary sculpture.
"Red V" is
an example of her recent work in which she explores how to achieve ideal forms
by dissecting squares. Its sense of motion is created by the perfectly smooth,
angular surfaces, which stand for nothing but themselves. The sculpture’s
relationship with the floor is severed by platforms of varying heights. Topuz’s
works strips the art of sculpture to its basic elements.
BEDRİ BAYKAM, 1957
Ingres, Gérôme, This Is My Bath, 1987 (Detail)
BEDRİ BAYKAM, 1957
Ingres, Gérôme, This Is My Bath, 1987 (Detail)
BEDRİ BAYKAM,
1957
Ingres,
Gérôme, This Is My Bath, 1987
Broken
Mirrors and Mixed Media on Plywood.
Dimensions: 202 x 860 cm
Private Collection
Long Term Loan
Bedri Baykam is a pioneer
of Neo-expressionism in post-1980s art in Turkey. He sometimes explores
personal stories and contemporary praxis through a poetic, expressionistic
language; at other times he uses the simplest collage technique. Baykam employs
diverse, expressive techniques ranging from the abstract to the figurative and
from installations to performance art. Through his works, in which he draws
attention to art’s political dimension, he shows the cultural imperialism of
the West as regards the Third World, as well as how it has appropriated modern
art history.
The work "Ingres,
Gérôme, This is my Bath" is part of the spatial installation Bedri Baykam
created in 1987 for the 1st International Istanbul Biennial. It
was located in architect Mimar Sinan’s Haseki Sultan Bath. The installation,
which appeals to the five senses and invites audience interaction, had water
running down the bath wall and also featured music and scent. The left side of
the work was adapted from Ingres’s Turkish Bath, the right side from
Gérôme’s Grand Bath at Bursa, and Baykam secretly included himself in the
painting. "Ingres, Gérôme, This is my Bath" may be interpreted as an
insider’s answer or appeal to the way foreign painters, who couldn't enter a
bath or harem, were captivated by them and imagined them in erotic terms, from
an Orientalist point of view.
HALE TENGER,
1960
Strange
Fruit, 2009
Two
Polyethylene Globes, Each 100 cm in Diameter, Paper Coated by
Hand and
Lacquered; Automated Feather Boa Curtain,
Feather Boa
Separation, Each 70 cm in Depth, Video and Audio
Istanbul
Museum of Modern Art Collection
Hale Tenger was born in
1960 to an immigrant family in Izmir. After graduating from Mimar Sinan University’s
Department of Ceramics, she went to the UK on scholarship and continued
postgraduate studies at the South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education. The
artist currently lives and works in Istanbul. In her works, Hale Tenger deals
with the ravages and difficulties caused on a global scale by civilization,
progress and modernization. She explores issues such as migration, frontiers
and discrimination as related to the concepts of identity, culture and
belonging. Her videos and her installations, in which she uses unusual
materials, draw on references from political history and human psychology. She
thus calls into question the individual’s existential conditions in the face of
power and the paradoxical situations in which humanity finds itself despite all
the pompous discourses on civilization and modernization. Foremost among these
situations are indirect or direct violence and hegemony.
Hale Tenger avoids the
role of representative, documentarist or simple spokesperson of her own
geography. Her works are extremely subtle and sensitive and open to universal
readings. Maps, and especially the globe, can be encountered in many of her
works, in which the artist often integrates elements such as voice recordings,
songs, text and poetry. Two globes also play the leading part in “Strange
Fruit” (2009), her installation in the collection. A geographic globe and an
upside down political globe –the latter revealed when the curtain opens–
silently rotate in the midst of stars sparkling against a dark background.
Despite the political globe’s unusual upside-down position,all the labels on
the map are right side up; in other words, all names are accessible as sources
of information. Because of their upside-down position on the map, we have
difficulty identifying places we know even though they are labeled. This
deviation from the conventional format thus renders meaningless the global
order imposed by frontiers and by socioeconomic and cultural conditions. This
political world turned upside down is accompanied by music that sometimes seems
familiar andsometimes strange. This is a new version of Heitor Villa-Lobos’s
aria Bachianas Brasileiras, specially arranged for the work and mostly played
backwards. It adds a romantic and melancholy yet tranquil tone to the atmosphere,
altogether intensifying the contradiction and strangeness of the situation and
leaving the decision to the viewer, just as is the case for those viewing all
that is happening in the world.
Hale Tenger also has a
concrete starting point: she reminds us that in reality racism and violence are
wounds that do not belong solely to the past but affect the whole of humanity
just as much today. A famous song immortalized by Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit
became the symbol of the struggle against racism in the United States. The
title of the song is from a poem written by the dissident American teacher Abel
Meeropol after he saw the photograph of two black men lynched by white people
and left hanging from a tree:
Southern trees bear
strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and
blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in
the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging
from the poplar trees.
Photo: Sinan Koçaslan
https://www.istanbulmodern.org/en/collection/collection/5?t=3&id=1558
SEMİHA
BERKSOY, (1910-2004)
Feast at the
Prison, 1999
Oil on
cardboard mounted on fibreboard
Dimensions: 99 x 69 cm
Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection
Long Term Loan
Turkey’s first female
opera singer, Semiha Berksoy was born in İstanbul in 1910. After being accepted
by the İstanbul Municipal Conservatory in 1928, she studied sculpture and
painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1929. At the same time, she also attended
the Theater School opened by Muhsin Ertuğrul. She later graduated from the
Berlin Academy of Music and became the first Turkish opera performer to perform
there. In later years, in addition to dance, music, and performing–disciplines
which had shaped her life–she began to paint. Her desire for self-expression
manifested itself first in theatrical forms, and then in the figures she
painted on canvas and on linen. She didn’t strive for perfection of forms,
lines, or colors. Always depicting herself, people from her family and circle
of friends, she exposes her paintings with childish imagination and
dramatic expression. The painting entitled "Feast at the Prison"
depicts Nazim Hikmet, Hikmet Kivilcimli and Kemal Tahir, who were imprisoned in
Çankırı Penitentiary during the same period.
TONY CRAGG,
1949
Ugly Faces, 2006
Wood
Dimensions: 200 x 140 x 110 cm.
Private Collection / Long Term Loan
British-born Tony Cragg
completed his art foundation course at the Gloucestershire College of Art and
Design in Cheltenham and continued his studies at the Wimbledon School of Art
(1969-1973). He completed his studies at the Royal College of Art (1973-1977).
In 1977 he moved to Wuppertal in Germany, where he continues to live and work.
Cragg made a name for
himself in the late 1970s with a series of mobile sculptures. He followed up
his success with a number of works made from brightly-colored, discarded
materials that he affixed to floors or walls to create recognizable shapes. By
the 1980s Cragg had established himself as one of the leading names in
contemporary sculpture. In later works he placed found objects in
three-dimensional configurations. One of his main inspirations in the late
1990s was the rotational energy of cyclones, which motivated him to produce
dramatic, vertical columns. The sculpture, "Ugly Faces", marks the beginning
of a new direction for Cragg as he incorporates into his work the idea of cell
fission and regeneration around a central axis.
BURHAN UYGUR,
(1940-1992)
The Door,
1987-1989
Mixed Media
on Wood and Canvas
Dimensions: 240 x 177 x 10 cm
Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection /
Long Term Loan
Burhan Uygur was a
student at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1961-1969 and studied painting under
Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu. In 1970, at the Salzburg Summer Academy, he worked with
Corneille from the Cobra group and put on street exhibitions with him.
Uygur was one of the most
important representatives of art in Turkey during the 1970s and 1980s. As a
man, he was known for his ardent passion, his vigorous love of life, his
artistic skill, and his close camaraderie. As an artist, he depicted those
close to him with a refined sensitivity. Over time the color blots he painted
using light brush strokes turned into symbols. The names of both his paintings
and his shows have a poetic flavor. When his poet friends sent him their
verses, Uygur responded with paintings and portraits of his own and with
illustrations for their books. Living life to the full, he painted what he
experienced and sought to experience what he painted. In some of his work he
went off in pursuit of "Fate", striving to divine the future with
fortune-telling women. He would bring "Queens of Hell" and "Far
Eastern Masters" to life on old picture frames and trays that he stumbled
across. This huge, four-paneled door represents a sort of "Judgment
Day" and is the pinnacle of his career. All of the surfaces and intricate
convolutions of this century-old wooden door are covered with sensual and
spiritual “confessions”. Uygur journeyed into the lightest and darkest recesses
of his heart and depicted everything that had ever been a part of his life.
ADNAN ÇOKER,
1927-2022
Retrospective
II, 1997
Acrylic on Canvas
Dimensions: 180 x 360 cm
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection
Ethem Sancak Donation
Adnan Çoker was a student
of Zeki Kocamemi at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1945-1951. From the beginning
of his career he tried to answer the question of how nature could be analyzed
in abstract art. He was interested in the space that enfolds an object, the
geometric constructs of a composition, and reducing color and expression to an
absolute minimum. He mainly looked to Cubism for solutions, until he went to Paris
in 1955.In 1953 Adnan Çoker and another artist, Lütfü Günay, organized a show
at the Faculty of Language, History, and Geography at Ankara University, which
is generally acknowledged to have been the first exhibition of abstract art
held in Turkey. A characteristic feature of the paintings of this period was
that problems related to line, rhythm, and tone tended to be resolved by an
approach that was neither fully abstract, nor cubist. Çoker looked for ways in
which he could combine an abstract view of traditional Turkish art with
European artistic traditions.
Upon arriving in Paris,
he worked briefly with André Lhote before moving on to the Henri Goetz studio,
where he discovered Abstract Expressionism, with its spontaneous brushstrokes
and thick layers of spatula-applied paint. Whilst Çoker incorporated these
techniques into his work until the mid 1960s, he also began after his second
trip to Paris in 1964 to produce the headless and armless figurative paintings
that he called Walking Meat. Oriental Enframing, produced in 1969,
was his first exploration of the structural features of Islamic architecture,
after which he developed a style in which he abstracted such forms as domes,
“Turkish triangles”, and minarets. Although the dominant color in his compositions
is black, his paintings radiate purple, pink, and mauve light.
Through his paintings,
which give a feeling of deep space, Çoker synthesizes Western minimalism and
Eastern purification and simplicity with an understanding of abstract art.
In Retrospective II, he brings together various forms he has used
previously.
DEVRİM ERBİL,
1937
Interpretation
of Nature, 1965
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 255 x 500 cm
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection /
İsmet Titiz Donation
Devrim Erbil graduated
from the painting department of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1959, where he was
a student of Halil Dikmen and Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu. He returned to the academy
in 1962 as a teaching assistant, and he worked in the studios of Bedri Rahmi
Eyüboğlu, Cemal Tollu, and Cevat Dereli. Along with Altan Gürman, Adnan Çoker,
Sarkis, and Tülay Tura, he was one of the founders of the “Mavi” (“Blue”) group
in 1963. Erbil became a professor at the academy in 1981 and continues to live
and work in İstanbul.
The paintings of Devrim
Erbil explore where “nature” ends and “abstraction” begins. He probes natural
forms by leaving out their complex, innate harmonies and rhythms. He also uses
geometric forms to tease out and isolate the life force of not only flocks of
swooping birds, but also seemingly immobile natural forms such as bare tree
branches and plant stalks in winter. This approach provides the starting-point
for his interpretation of nature. Rather than seeing a straightforward picture
of a forest with leafy branches, a viewer is invited to imagine a forest that
is a thick mass of dancing branches and flowing streams.
Erbil’s work seems to
consist of forms spread out on an even plane, but upon closer inspection a
viewer begins to see that there is actually a complex labyrinth of textures and
surfaces. The vertical bars seem to be retreating into the canvas as thought
they form part of the shadows cast by the trees, while thin layers of yellow
paint join and diverge like streams of light. Thick strokes of spatula-applied
brown paint repeat the palpable, irregular rhythms of natural textures that are
reminiscent of tree bark.
SEÇKİN PİRİM,
1977
Deep, 2012
Metallic
Paint on Paper
Dimensions: 120 x 270 cm
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection
Born in 1977 in Ankara,
Seçkin Pirim spent his childhood in artists’ studios. He earned his BA and MA
from the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University department of sculpture.
Pirim’s works are based
on thinking about the resistance people develop to the controlling powers of
the social and individual structures they live in. His sculptures reflect
questions about life’s free, flexible, and slippery aspect versus its
organized, rational side. Through pointing to concepts of time, change, and
integration, the works evoke humankind’s technology-based world. The forms
within the whole of each piece are rendered invisible: they are repeated
modular units, reproduced scrupulously, without a hint of chance. He thus seeks
to show, through a hypnotic effect, the struggle and confrontations of the
individual who seeks unboundedness within boundaries.
In his paper work
"Deep", which attempts to emphasize the effect of time on people, the
rhythm created by pure modular units brings a three-dimensional movement and
effect to the work, adding depth toward the dark center. Its structural qualities
and technical solutions challenge the limits of perception.
RICHARD
WENTWORTH, 1947
False
Ceiling, 2005
Books and
Steel Cable
Dimensions variable
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection /
Eczacıbaşı Group Donation
Born in 1947 in Samoa,
Richard Wentworth attended Hornsey College of Art, London, from 1965 and worked
with Henry Moore as an assistant in 1967. He was awarded a master’s degree in
1970 from the Royal College of Art and went on to become one of the most
influential teachers in British art at Goldsmith's College, where he taught
from 1971 to 1987.
Richard Wentworth has
played a leading role in New British Sculpture since the late 1970s. By
transforming and manipulating industrial or found objects into works of art,
Wentworth subverts their original function and extends our understanding of
them by breaking the conventional system of classification.
A version of "False
Ceiling" was originally shown as part of the Fourth International
İstanbul Biennial in 1995. This is a later site-specific version. Wentworth
uses books from Eastern and Western cultures to reference both their origins
and the Duchampian idea of the “Ready-Made”. The exact arrangement of the books
plays with ideas of cultural closeness and distance. The title of the work and
the horizontal positioning of the books question the extent to which the
authority of the printed word is being eroded. No one can reach or easily open
the books, creating a barrier that effectively nullifies any knowledge
contained with them. In this work, books – repositories of truth, knowledge and
lies – are little more than a permeable, seductive and symbolic surface.
ISTANBUL MODERN MUSEUM: THE SYMPHONY OF COLOURS
DESIGN BY RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP
RPBW PEOPLE
At RPBW, the method is participatory. A team of architects
works on each project, alongside engineers, builders, interns, model makers and
landscape designers. The RPBW thinking goes that working collaboratively means
working better: More ideas, more cultural and generational diversity, more
experience, knowledge and creativity — and more eyes to ensure every detail of
a project is realized exactly as planned.
A people-centric philosophy is at the heart of the design
process. Public spaces are integral to RPBW projects. The workshop’s belief is
that better buildings make for a better world. A successful building is one
that improves daily life for the people who live and work around it.
ABOUT
RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP
The Renzo Piano Building Workshop RPBW was established by
Renzo Piano 1981 with offices in Genoa, Italy and Paris, France.
RPBW is led by 12 partners, including Pritzker Prize
Laureate, architect Renzo Piano.
The practice permanently employs about 100 architects and 30
support staff including 3D visualization artists, BIM managers, model makers,
archivists, and administrative and secretarial staff.
Our team has a extensive experience working in
multi-disciplinary teams on building projects in France, Italy and abroad.
As architects we are involved in projects from start to
finish and typically provide full architectural design and consultancy services
through the construction phase. Our design skills and capacity extends beyond
architectural services to include interior design, master planning, landscape
design and exhibition design services.
RPBW has successfully undertaken and completed over 140
projects worldwide.
Currently, projects in progress include among others: The
CERN Science Gateway Building in Geneva, The Tokio Marine Headquarters in
Tokyo, the Paris North Hospital, and the new Politecnico di Milano campus in
Milan.
Major projects already completed include: the Centre Georges
Pompidou in Paris; the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas; the Kanak Cultural
Center in Nouméa, New Caledonia; the Kansaï International Airport Terminal
Building in Osaka; the Beyeler Foundation Museum in Basel; the reconstruction
of the Potsdamer Platz area in Berlin; the Rome Auditorium; the New York Times
Building in New York; the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco; the Chicago
Art Institute expansion in Chicago, Illinois; The Shard in London; Columbia
University’s Manhattanville development project in New York City; the Harvard
museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Intesa Sanpaolo office building in
Turin, Italy; the Kimbell Art Museum expansion in Texas; the Whitney Museum of
American Art in New York; the Valletta City Gate in Malta; the Stavros Niarchos
Cultural Center in Athens; the Centro Botín in Santander; the New Paris
Courthouse; the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles and others
throughout the world.
Exhibitions of RPBWs works have been held in many cities
worldwide including London, Shanghai, New York, Padova, Paris and most recently
in Toronto.
ISTANBUL MODERN DESIGN BY RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP
The new museum will become an urban focal point between the
old town to the west, the Bosphorus to the south, the Tophane Park to the north
and the new Galataport waterside development to the east which replaces the old
pier activity. The project enhances the connectivity between these different
areas and becomes a social and cultural destination for the city and visitors.
The Park at the north of the site, surrounded by historical buildings and
confined by a high traffic street is a green lung for the whole Galata area and
acts as a buffer zone, sheltering the waterfront and the museum from the city
noise.
The museum project is part of an overall regenerative masterplan
of 1.5km along the quay. The Galataport redevelopment project is a network of
below ground facilities and parking serving the port and cruise ship terminal
and a commercial centre above ground.
Maximising the connection with the park and to cover most of
the basement entry ramp north of the museum building, the ground floor level is
raised to preserve a seamless visual and physical connection between the
waterfront and the park through the transparent lobby. A carefully designed
system of slopes and steps merges the ground floor into the surrounding public
spaces.
The building is developed on five levels, three above ground
and two below. The 15,000 sqm building is not only home to the existing and
future art collections of the Istanbul Modern, but it also provides a safe and
inviting environment for educational and cultural activities offering multiple
gathering occasions to the community and the city. The transparent lobby gives
public access to a café, bookshop, library, museum information points, and a
dedicated workshop area for the “Discovery Space” project, developed in
collaboration with Centre Pompidou in Paris.
A glazed fence around the ground floor ensures a secured
environment where the public can enjoy an outdoor café and a sculpture garden.
Inside, a grand central stair connects all the public levels: from the cinema
located below-ground to the galleries at the upper levels. The landing lobbies
at each floor allows a visual connection to the sea and park, piercing the
building volume along a north-south axis.
Level 1 is home to the photo and pop-up galleries, the
multipurpose rooms and the staff offices. The Istanbul Modern restaurant is
along the south façade offering a breath-taking view of the Bosphorus from an
external terrace.
Level 2 has the same visual connection to the sea and park
through the lobby axis; this leads the visitor to the permanent and temporary
art galleries which host 3,300 sqm of exhibition space. Both galleries are open
and flexible with a concrete column structure that defines the industrial
character of the space, set out on an 8.4m x 8.4m grid carried from the car
parking levels below ground.
A stair from level 2 gives access to a roof-top viewing deck
of 450 sqm. This covered terrace is floating above a shallow water plane
covering the entire rooftop creating a visual continuity with the Bosphorus.
All the mechanical equipment exposed, including an antenna bending with the
wind, are grouped within the terrace profile leaving an uninterrupted panoramic
view merging sky and water into a unique metaphysical space.
The building is a volume above a recessed clear glass façade
at the ground floor. A formed metal panel facade plays with the reflections of
the light and water of the Bosphorus and gives the building a different
appearance and vibrancy based on the movement of the sun. On the park side the
shadow of the foliage will also produce different patterns on the façade. On
the east and west sides, the building mass creates a double height space acting
as a shelter for the activities underneath, facing the old city to the west and
welcoming the visitors coming from the new Galataport development to the east.
The escape stair routes from the upper levels are exposed
but nested in the building façade, accessible by a system of external walkways
adding another layer of depth to the facade.
The concrete column system is reinforced with steel cross
bracings to perform appropriately in such a seismic area.
At ground level the typical square concrete columns become
circular. These circular columns together with the cylindrical mechanical
funnels populate the ground floor, and with the absence of any opaque walls,
this creates an unexpected landscape between the park and sea.
http://www.rpbw.com/project/istanbul-modern
HISTORY OF
SITE
For thousands of years, the Golden Horn
area served as an inlet port of the Bosphorus, and this natural port united
Istanbul with other centers of commerce and culture around the world.
In the 13th century, various Italian
trading colonies in Istanbul began to build harbors in the area. One of these
was the Genoese port in Galata, which includes the Tophane district. By
the 17th century, the Karaköy-Tophane waterfront had become the main arrival
point for ships coming from Europe.
At first, each shipping company had its
own floating dock/specific anchorage location where it positioned its vessels,
and provided a separate rowing team to bring goods and passengers ashore. With
the increase in maritime traffic and corresponding rise in the number of
passengers, this system became inadequate. In 1879, the construction of piers
all along the shore began.
In 1910, warehouses were built on the
piers. With the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the piers were
turned over to the Maritime Lines and Docks Administration, which became the
Turkish Maritime Administration in 1984. The pier, which started to host
cruise ships along with cargo ships from the 1980s onwards, was used as the
main port of Istanbul until 1990.
In 1990, plans for a new passanger port
on the coastline between Karaköy and Salıpazarı were developed. Following the
transfer agreement with the Turkish Maritime Administration, the port area was
renamed Galataport Istanbul Port Management and Investments Inc. in February
2018.
ISTANBUL MODERN MUSEUM: THE SYMPHONY OF COLOURS
DESIGN BY RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP
BEDRİ RAHMİ
EYÜBOĞLU, (1911-1975)
Coffeehouse,
1973
Acrylic on
Canvas
Dimensions: 125 x 125 cm
Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection /
Long Term Loan
Initially a student of
artist Zeki Kocamemi at the Trabzon High School in 1927, Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu
entered the Academy of Fine Arts in 1929 with his teacher’s encouragement.
Eyüboğlu broadened the scope of his art by turning to murals in the 1940s and
to mosaics in the 1950s.
As an artist, Bedri Rahmi
Eyüboğlu effectively employed a number of different techniques, producing work
that successfully blended his versatility in painting, mosaics, ceramics,
murals, calligraphy, engraving, and serigraphy. Completed two year’s before his
death, the painting "Coffeehouse" effectively sums up all of the
experiences and influences of a career that lasted more than half a century. A
viewer can easily identify the influences of Matisse and Dufy from the Paris
years, particularly in the selection of colors such as the vibrant red of the
little table at the center. The striking folkloric elements of the figures,
which became increasingly apparent in his 1960s work, can also be traced back
to his “Homeland Tours” experience. With the remarkable terseness typical of
him, Eyüboğlu provokes the viewer to think about his painting by observing the
different ways in which he has drawn his figures. Whilst the two sitting behind
the table look as if they are weighed down by the cares of the world, the
figure to the left stares straight ahead with a detached stolidness and the
figure to the right seems to be utterly oblivious to everything but his own
music.
FAHRELNİSSA
ZEİD, (1901-1991)
My Hell, 1951
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 205 x 528 cm
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection /
Şirin Devrim and Prince Raad Donation
The mother of painter
Nejad Melih Devrim, Fahrelnissa Zeid was a member of an artistic family that
included the artist Aliye Berger, the ceramicist Füreya Koral, and the author
Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı. After graduating from the School of Fine Arts, she went
to Paris in 1928 and pursued her studies in art at the Académie Ranson. In 1934
she married Prince Zeid bin Hussein, Iraq’s ambassador to Turkey, and became a
princess in the Hashemite dynasty. Known for both her figurative and
non-figurative work, she had her first solo exhibition at the Colette Alendy
Gallery in Paris. In her early period, Zeid produced landscapes with figures
freely placed in compositions whose surfaces are divided into colored sections
in a manner reminiscent of Gothic stained glass windows. After 1950, she took
part in École de Paris shows. Expressing the world of her emotions through
colored abstractions in her paintings, Zeid turned her attentions to portraits
and figures. After 1970 she focused on psychological exposition.
"My Hell",
dated 1951, is one of her most accomplished works in terms of its linearity,
its intricately fragmented surface, and its synthesis of stained glass and
painting. A wave of color seems to be washing horizontally across the surface,
carrying the composition along with the myriad geometrical fragments of which
it is comprised.
FAHRELNİSSA ZEİD, (1901-1991)
My Hell, 1951 (Detail)
NEJAD MELİH
DEVRİM, (1923-1995)
Abstract
Composition, 1947-1949
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 237 x 304 cm
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection / Eczacıbaşı Group Donation
The son of artist
Fahrelnissa Zeid, Nejad Melih Devrim was born on Büyükada in 1923. Until 1960,
his work is divided into three main periods: “Calligraphic”, “Paris School”,
and “Black-and-White”. Devrim is best known internationally as a Lyrical
Abstract painter. He exhibited work in the “Yeniler” (“Newcomers”) exhibition
of 1941 that invited submissions with “social content dealing with the theme of
harbors”. In 1950 he appeared alongside such major artists as Rothko, Pollock,
da Silva, Reinhardt, and de Staël at an exhibition of “Young American and
French Painters” held at the Sidney Janis Gallery. He established a place for
himself in the “Paris School” of the post-war art scene in France. As a Lyrical
Abstract artist, Nejad Devrim believed that nature should not be imitated, but
rather its meaning explored. He depicted what he found in lyrically expressive
paintings in which color is used as a powerful compositional element. He
regarded his paintings as places in which chance encounters and unknowns might
be discovered. In 1946, whilst in Paris, he developed a style based on his
studies of the symbolism of Byzantine art and mosaics at the Ayasofya and
Kariye mosques in İstanbul and on his research into Turkish art. The result was
a series of “solutions” to the problem of plastic values in painting created
from a sense of linear rhythm and color.
"Abstract Composition" is the earliest-known example of an abstract painting by a Turkish artist. In this painting, surfaces divided into geometrical domains complete one another in a rhythmic balance while color is used freely without implying any suggestion of “nature”. Different coloring methods are used for different areas whilst a sense of layered depth is created among the different surfaces.
ZEKİ FAİK
İZER, (1905-1988)
Statue of
Jean Goujon and Model, 1968
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 144 x 96,5 cm.
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection / Eczacıbaşı Group Donation
Zeki Faik İzer enrolled
at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1923 and later graduated from the studio of
İbrahim Çallı. In 1928 he went to Paris, where he worked in the studios of
André Lhote and Othon Friesz until 1932. He was one of the original founders of
the D Group (1933) and during this period produced painting in the Late Cubism
style that was characteristic of the entire group. He maintained his ties with
Paris and frequently returned in order to keep up with the latest artistic
developments. When abstract art came to dominate the Parisian art scene from
1945 to1960 its impact can be seen in İzer’s work, although his greatest
influences seem to have been Roger Bissiére and Alfred Manessier, Paris’s
leading names in non-figurative painting. İzer’s paintings during the 1950s are
characterized by vigorous brushstrokes, whilst his post 1960s work in the
Lyrical Abstract style see him interpreting nature through rhythmic and melodic
brush strokes.
In this painting,
"Statue of Jean Goujon and Model", dated 1968, a
model and the figure of Goujon can be vaguely discerned. However, during these
years Zeki Faik İzer produced both works that showed an abstract tendency (like
this one), as well as entirely abstract works. He was perhaps unsure about
which direction to take at this point in his career.
KUZGUN ACAR,
1928 - 1976
Untitled,
1961
Iron
Dimensions: 47
x 65 x 52 cm
Dr. Nejat F.
Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection
Long Term
Loan
UNTITLED,
1961
Iron
Dimensions:
38 x 40 x 38 cm
Dr. Nejat F.
Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection
Long Term
Loan
After graduating from a
business college, Kuzgun Acar entered the Academy of Fine Arts as a sculpture
student. Starting out in the studio of Rudolf Belling, he later transferred to
the studios of Hadi Bara and Zühtü Müridoğlu. He graduated in 1953. One of his
entries to the Paris International Youth Biennial of 1961 was awarded first
prize, which entitled him to mount a solo show at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la
Ville de Paris in 1962.
He belonged to a
generation that believed that art should infuse all aspects of life. Kuzgun
Acar was not so much a “sculptor” (in the sense of someone who “sculpts” or
“cuts away”) as a “constructor”. Unlike a traditional sculptor, he took no
interest in revealing concealed forms. Instead he sought to crystallize his
thoughts through the creation of new forms in empty space. He brought together
previously disjointed elements so they complemented one another and created a
sense of motion based on the relationship of cause and effect. Working with
found materials and transforming their disorder into solid structures by
ridding them of their imperfections or excesses, he discovered a world that he
could explore through his intelligence and emotions. Kuzgun Acar used
technology, but only in its more rudimentary forms such as welding. Notes that
he made in his sketchbooks tell us that he thought metal to be a superior
material to work with for two reasons: because it has been used by man since
Iron Age, and also because of the thought provoking, even disturbing reactions
that it provokes in a viewer when familiar metal forms (such as nails) are used
in unconventional ways.
MUSTAFA
HORASAN, 1965
The Party Has
Just Started, 2009 From the Series “Crash”, Paul McCarthy
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 200 x 170 cm
Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection
Long Term Loan
Mustafa Horasan studied
printmaking at the fine arts faculty of Marmara University and graduated in
1986. He currently lives and works in Istanbul, where he has a studio.
Mustafa Horasan creates
autobiographical images that are dialogues between the “present” in which he is
currently caught and his own personal history. They seem to intersect memory at
right angles. He maps out the distorted organs, creature/human duality of
transmogrified beings and frustrated or confined bodies, through the use of
original anatomical and flexible forms. Horasan works with distinctive shapes,
compositions, and colors, capturing the anger, unease, exaggeration and sarcasm
contained within human bodies. His humorous and playful approach can unsettle
our sense of reality. His series “Crash” grew from his interpretation of images
created by certain artists. In these two works entitled "From Paul
McCarthy" Horasan draws on McCarthy’s work to depict tense
scenes with elements of crudity, echoes of the subconscious, and extreme
references to sexuality and the body. The anxiety of a person trying to remove
a mask from his face by tearing it to pieces and the unparalleled discomfort of
someone who transforms a cauldron into a toilet are some of the performances
that McCarthy realized in confined spaces.
SABRİ BERKEL,
(1907-1993)
Abstract
Composition, 1973
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 195,5 x 151 cm.
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection / Eczacıbaşı Group Donation
Skopje-born Sabri Berkel
studied art at the Belgrade School Fine of Arts and in the studio of Felice
Carena at the Fine Arts Academy of Florence. He came to Turkey in 1935 and
taught in a number of schools before being appointed teaching assistant at the
engraving studio in the Academy of Fine Arts. Joining the D Group in 1941,
Berkel took part in many group exhibitions as well as mounting solo shows in
Austria, Holland, and Switzerland, and Turkey.
A skilled artist of the
human form, Sabri Berkel began to explore Cubist abstraction in the 1930s as a
language suited to expressing his vision of the people and scenes around him.
The result of this exploration was a series of paintings depicting women
wearing traditional headscarves, a variety of street peddlers, fishermen, and
village scenes, all executed in a Cubist abstract style. In the early 1950s
Berkel turned his attention to geometric abstraction and began making use of
forms plucked from the traditional Turkish arts of calligraphy and marbling. In
the 1970s there was yet another change in his style, as Berkel favored more
simplified forms and minimalist compositions that eventually mutated into
plain-colored "gaps" that look as if they have been cut or torn out
of the canvas surface. Sabri Berkel’s use of vivid color and unrestrained
inventiveness suggests he was influenced by contemporary graphic design, as was
the American artist Andy Warhol.
YÜKSEL
ARSLAN, 1933
Capitalist
Production Process I (Private Property), 1972
Mixed Media
on Paper
Dimensions: 59 x 99 cm
Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection /
Long Term Loan
Yüksel Arslan was a
student in the art history department of İstanbul University, but his love of
painting led him to abandon his studies and to devote himself entirely to
creating art. Arslan’s audacious, provocative, critical, and satirical style
has gained him an important place in the history of art in Turkey. Throughout
his career he has always stood apart from academic styles, whether in terms of
subject, material, or style. His surrealistic paintings are just as likely to
reveal the influences of traditional calligraphy and shadow puppet theatre, as
they are to reference Freud’s theories of the subconscious.
In "Capitalist
Production Process I (Private Property)", for which Karl
Marx’s Das Kapital served as source material, Yüksel Arslan presents
a caustic, symbol-based view of the impact of capitalist production processes
on society and the individual. As is customary in his work, Arslan uses
different shades of one color to depict a crowded scene of workers and
industrialists. Like the mass-produced goods they are manufacturing, the
workers are “standardized” (they all have the same facial features), while the
factory owners’ heads have been transformed into coins.
TOMUR ATAGÖK,
1939
Madonna with
Thousand Faces, 1989
Mixed Media
on Metal
Dimensions: 200 x 300 cm
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection / Eczacıbaşı Group Donation
Tomur Atagök
studied the plastic arts at Oklahoma State University and California College of
Arts and Crafts and she holds an MA in the same subject from the University of
California at Berkeley. Her work is characterized by its unusual materials and
surfaces and in some of her early works she uses handmade paper. In later work
she uses steel and aluminum as surfaces, as well as the more usual canvas. In
the 1990s she produced works that successfully combined these surfaces and
collage.
Women have been a
particularly important theme in Tomur Atagök’s work since the 1970s. In her
paintings that explore female identity, existence and relationships, using
different surfaces and materials, she often depicts women who have attained
mythical status. "Madonna with a Thousand Faces" is one of the best
examples.
SELMA GÜRBÜZ,
(1960 - 2021)
Self Portrait,
2004
Mixed Media
on Paper
Dimensions: 256 x 120 cm
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection /
In Memory of Ceylan Göğüş,
Ceyda - Ünal Göğüş Donation
Born in Istanbul in 1960,
Selma Gürbüz began studying art at the Exeter College of Art and Design in the
UK. She graduated from Marmara University in 1984 with a degree in fine art.
She currently works in İstanbul and Paris.
An interesting aspect of
the refined, powerful images in Selma Gürbüz’s most recent work, "The
Fairie and The Genie", is that they include her own “countenance and
attitudes”, to express the ethereal elements within herself. These works are
closer to “Eastern” identities and sensibilities and contain the “complexity
and clarity of the Oriental world of emotions” that constantly disconcerts the
West. The majority of the images that Selma Gürbüz executes on handmade
Oriental paper consist of “Eastern” motifs set within “Western” outlines. This
references historical periods when Western art, having exhausted its own visual
traditions, underwent a renewal and revitalization nourished by “Eastern” art.
Selma Gürbüz’s finely-honed and purified images not only open countless ways
into both the Eastern and Western visual traditions, but they also invite us to
think about the “good” and “bad” sides of the human psyche.
AVNİ ARBAŞ,
(1919-2003)
The Boat,
1955
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 115 x 195 cm.
Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbașı Foundation Collection /
Long Term Loan
Avni Arbaş studied under
Leopold Levy at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1940-46 and was one of the
founding members of the New Group (Yeniler Grubu). After graduating, he
received a grant from the French government to go to Paris, where he spent the
next thirty years and mounted a number of solo shows. In Paris, he studied
prominent art movements of the time but instead of adopting any he internalized
the traditional language of painting and created his own visual language. He
was not really interested in innovation and destruction, preferring to
investigate the continuous and self-renewing lines of painting. Arbaş prefers
to dissolve his figures with paint, divesting them of detail so they become
more like amorphous color stains. This approach places him in between abstract
and figurative painting. For most of his paintings, Arbaş chooses a motif that
has some personal significance for him at a certain point in his life. This
motif is then repeated so it becomes a single pattern. He does not paint the
figure in front of him, but rather the images that are impressed on his memory
as color and light. He turns his perceptions into a work of art through
interpretation.
"The
Boat" is about the image of a boat that was stamped on Arbaş’s
memory, as well as light, sea and fog, which are represented as living beings,
independent of their geography.
ORHAN PEKER,
1926 – 1978
The Fisher
Boy and Cats, 1976
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions:
189 x 266 cm
Dr. Nejat F.
Eczacıbaşı Foundation Collection
Long Term Loan
A pupil of the St.
George’s Austrian High School, Orhan Pekerwas a student of Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu
at the Academy of Fine Arts. He was a member of the “Onlar” (“Ten”) group
formed by Bedri Rahmi’s students and took part in its activities until 1952. Peker
participated in Oskar Kokoschka’s Salzburg summer academy.
The subject of Peker’s
“The Fisher Boy and Cats” would seem to be quite straightforward: the intense
interest that two cats are taking in a boy’s tray of fish. However, much more
can be perceived from this deceptively simple scene. Consider the three
horizontal bands of cool tones. Is the narrow strip of gray and blue at the top
the distant counterpart of the lighter and broader gray band at the bottom? Is
the broad expanse of black and blue in the middle the sea or is it a wall that
the boy is bracing himself against? The scene resounds with emptiness while the
fisher boy is draped in twilight colors. The two cats, the black one barely
perceptible against the central band, signal the time of day: it is nearly
dusk, the time when, as the saying goes, “a white thread cannot be
distinguished from a black”. The cats have turned their backs on us and stare
intently at the boy’s fish. The boy, for his part, is equally intent on
protecting his catch, which he hopes to sell. There are no customers: there is
only the viewer, who is both inaccessible and detached from the scene. The
fisherman’s gaze is ambiguous: he’s certainly not looking at the viewer, but
what is he looking at? He seems to be lost deep in thought until we realize
that his stance and gaze are identical to those of the cats: calm, inert,
waiting. No longer a boy and not yet a man, our fisherman is captured in a
twilight zone of life. Painted in Ayvalık in 1976, “The Fisher Boy and Cats” depicts
experience that most of us can relate to. As is the case with so many of Orhan
Peker’s works, meaning is imparted not only through the choice of subject, but
by means of delicate and mainly luminescent colors.
NURI KUZUCAN,
1971
Exterior,
2011
Acrylic on
Canvas
Dimensions: 190 x 200 cm.
Private Collection
Long Term Loan
Born in 1971 in Zara,
Nuri Kuzucan graduated from Mimar Sinan University, Fine Arts Department, and
received his master’s degree from the Institute of Social Sciences.
By producing works
pertaining to architecture and the city, Kuzucan explores on canvas the concept
of modernity and modern architecture. He generally depicts multilayered urban
landscapes in abstract geometric forms. By drawing a close-up of a building or a
bird’s-eye view of a city, through his complex lines he offers viewers the
opportunity to see the inorganic world they live in through a different lens.
Through the diverse perspectives he uses Kuzucan also draws attention to the
solitude the modern world creates for human beings, and thus succeeds in
transforming his spectator sometimes simply into an outside witness and
sometimes into a figure within the whole. Through the dichotomies of interior
and exterior, near and far, and detail and whole he changes and transforms
perceptions as he does architectural units.
In his work
"Exterior" from the series Interior & Exterior we see mostly
sterile and frigid structures. In this work, rather than luring viewers in
through the use of color, Kuzucan chooses to place them at a distance as mere
witnesses and thus asks them to reflect on this attitude.
ADRIAN VILLAR
ROJAS 1980
The Most
Beautiful of All Mothers (I), 2015
Organic and
Inorganic Materials
Dimensions:
230 x 280 x 220 cm
No.17201
Istanbul
Museum of Modern Art Collection
Adrián Villar Rojas
prefers using symbolic and mythological narrations in his works. “The
Most Beautiful of All Mothers”, a site-specific installation on the
Island of Büyükada for the 14th Istanbul Biennial, is also
Rojas’ way of imagining how it would be like to look at planet Earth and human
culture through the eyes of an alien, without prejudice. Each life-size,
smoothly finished animal made of white fiberglass carries another animal on its
back, the latter made of organic waste and inert materials. The goats are part
of the twenty-nine sculptures of animals made of organic and inorganic
materials that stood alone or in groups on the sea, off the shoreline by the
ruins of Trotsky’s house. On their backs, the goats carry an animal made of
waste materials gathered from different countries and whose form is indistinct
because it has been worn away by seawater.
RICHARD
DEACON, 1949
House
Version, 2005
Stainless
Steel
Dimensions:
274 x 276 x 192 cm
Private
Collection Long Term Loan
Richard Deacon graduated
from St. Martins College of Art, where he concentrated on performance based
work. He continued with his master's studies shortly afterwards at the Royal
College of Art, also studying art history on a part-time basis at the Chelsea School
of Art. In 1987, he was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize. In the course of
his career, Deacon has worked with a variety of media and scales. His body of
work includes small scale works, suitable for showing in art galleries, as well
as monumental pieces shown in sculpture parks. The interaction of interior and
exterior space is one of the prevailing motifs of the artist's oeuvre. Deacon
may approach the unoccupied, negative space in the center or between the
elements of his works as essential to the final form, so that in his sculptures
empty space often functions like positive forms, and emptiness becomes just
another medium, like ceramic, wood or steel. With an interest in performance
art ever since his early student days, Deacon's works often allude to the body.
"House Version", with its stainless steel tubes of variable lengths
bonded together, reminds one of molecular models. The sense of movement, never
lacking in the artist’s works, is also conveyed here, by the roughness of the surface.
The crude, sandpapered finish, like a stratum in continual becoming, reflects
light in a myriad of directions, presenting an endless show of distorted colors
and shapes.
ISTANBUL MODERN MUSEUM DIRECTOR LEVENT ÇALIKOĞLU
ABOUT ISTANBUL MODERN
From the Chair of the
Board
The conception of Istanbul Modern dates
back to 1987 and the organization of the 1st International Istanbul
Biennial, in which I am proud to have taken part. In 2003, after searching many
years for a location worthy of our city's first museum of modern and
contemporary art, we were delighted to be allocated Antrepo No. 4, a maritime
warehouse located at the Karaköy port, an area until then closed to the public.
With the transformation of this
warehouse into a modern museum building, Istanbul Modern introduced art and
culture to both Karaköy, one of the oldest settlements on the Bosphorus, and
the historic district of Galata, a commercial center dating back hundreds of
years.
Since 2004, when we opened our doors as
Turkey’s first museum of modern and contemporary art, Istanbul Modern has
played an important role in Istanbul's cultural and artistic life. We have
responded to the public's tremendous interest and expectations with a large
variety of activities in every art discipline and appealing to different
groups. In addition to hosting prominent national and international
exhibitions, we have organized educational programs for children, youth and
adults, film screenings, social projects and more. Embracing a contemporary
approach to museology, Istanbul Modern has transformed the public's perception
of a museum by creating a cultural living space offering a cinema, library,
restaurant and design shop as well as exhibition halls.
A must-see art and culture institution
for Istanbul's international visitors, Istanbul Modern has received 8.5 million
viewers to date and undertaken an active role in disseminating Turkey's
artistic creativity at home and abroad. Over the same period, 850 thousand
children and youth have benefited from our free art education programs. Through
its dynamic social programs and events, the museum transformed into a vibrant
part of the city's fabric.
Now, we are delighted to reopen our
doors to art lovers with our unique and world-class new museum building built
on the site of the former Antrepo building. The spatial attributes,
infrastructure, technology, and visitor-focused approach of the new building
are designed to meet every need of an international modern and contemporary art
museum, offering us a unique opportunity to raise our standards.
We have resumed our activities and are
inviting millions of visitors to exhibitions of modern and contemporary art
from Turkey and the world in our new space designed by Renzo Piano Building
Workshop, internationally renowned for their expertise and experience in museum
architecture. With the momentum contributed by our new building, our next aim is
to raise the bar and strengthen Istanbul Modern's standing among the world's
leading centers of art.
Istanbul Modern welcomes all art lovers
to join us in celebrating a new chapter of our museum, where a unique and
unforgettable experience awaits.
Oya Eczacıbaşı
Istanbul
Modern
Chair
of the Board
ISTANBUL MODERN: THE SYMPHONY OF COLOURS
DESIGN BY RENZO PIANO BUILDING WORKSHOP
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