All told there are about 100 galleries showing at Contemporary Istanbul this year, catering to a huge variety of taste. For Cornucopia a tour of the lower floor from our stand by the Art Cafe starts with sweeping titanium sculpture by Ilhan Koman, pressed-flower copper ‘canvases’ by Tayfun Erdoğmuş, dots by Damien Hirst opposite a couple of Warhols, stills from Kutluğ Ataman videos and art from Korea.
Ilhan Koman, Shell (gallery exhibition side view)
Tayfun Erdoğmuş (Gallery Nev Istanbul)
At least those are some of our highlights. It is easy to miss three works by Yüksel Arslan, forced into a whisper by a narrow corridor at the Mim Arts booth, almost completely drowned out by neighbouring Ahmet Guneştekin –‘the most spoken name of Turkish contemporary art’, apparently.
Yüksel Arslan (Mim Art)
Yüksel Arslan (Mim Art)
Working our way back through the dozens of booths in this section alone overload is nearly kicking in. But there is relief to be found in the broad brush strokes of Herbert Brandl's mountain at the Mario Mauroner booth.
Herbert Brandl, HB12LIE, 2012, oil on canvas, 125 x 250cm
Without showing a singe work here, the artist making the biggest impact in the first days of the fair was Joseph Kosuth. On Thursday the founding figure of conceptual art addressed a full conference room in a conversation (or monologue with promptings) with curator and art historian Nazlı Gürlek. Since he broke ground with One and Three Chairs – photographs and dictionary definitions presented alongside the titular furniture itself – in 1965 he has been persistently challenging the meaning of making art, and the art of making meanings. The project is most recently taken up with the debut of The Wake at Kuad Gallery in Beşiktaş.
I have written on this blog that it is a pity we couldn’t hear Kosuth in conversation with Ivan Navarro, whose exhibition at Egeran Gallery opened on the same day as Kosuth's. Their work shares some characteristics visually – perhaps superficially – with both frequently using neon lights and text. But there are generational differences. Kosuth started working with neon because it was not a fine art material, the opposite, even. Decades later, Navarro is able to explore its limits. For Little Battle – a performance on Thursday night at Near East in Dolapdere – his son played a lit-up glass drum kit originally conceived as a silent exhibition piece. Reviews on the night varied, but it would be a mistake to judge it on purely musical criteria.
Ivan Navarro, Odio, Brick, glass and neon light installation (Egeran Gallery)
Events like this bring people together in a way that even the most popular exhibition can’t hope to. ‘It’s like a Petri dish’ says Mari Spirito of Protocinema, a non-profit based in both Istanbul and New York, showing in the Art Initiatives section of the fair. Can Altay, whose digital archive Spirito is offering as an artwork at Contemporary Istanbul, noticed that at Frieze everything happened at the tables. So that’s the Protocinema booth: two tables and a few chairs; a photographic print for sale is not hung on the walls. Amongst all the rampant commercialism, it is nice to have some meta comment on what is going on.
A similar point was more acutely made by Rene Blok, curator of Tanas Gallery in Berlin, in his talk about Central and Eastern Europe, this year’s thematic New Horizon. In the Balkans especially, Istanbul has acted a hub for contemporary art and there is a strong recent history of dialogue in biennials and exhibitions which looks set to continue, hopefully boosted by the visiting galleries.
There are many criteria for assessing the success of a fair like this, and opinions vary as much as priorities: organisation, content, publicity, sales, atmosphere... Whatever. Contemporary is – for now – unique in Istanbul.