It was almost comic (sans).
Tommi Brem, December 8th, 2009One visitor commented on Contemporary Istanbul: Concentrated Mediocricy. I can see their point. These two examples I just couldn’t resist posting, to illustrate the situation:
The picture below is not from a local art market, but from Contemporary Istanbul. Ramex Gallery from Kassel in Germany was exhibiting works by Mehmet Güler, an artist who is at the time of writing not even featured on their website, but listed on artfacts, if you want to have a look. Their booth had the feel of an art market in the village next to where I live, with stacks and stacks of paintings that all look alike.
I’m not saying this makes it low quality contemporary art (in fact, I think it is, anyway), but if you then have a whole table of prints made up like greeting cards (the only thing missing was a “Get well soon!” headline) it’s a downer … if that would be part of the concept … but look as I might, I couldn’t detect even a trace of a concept.
And then, around the corner, and forgive me if I don’t even want to make the effort finding out which gallery it was, they printed out the artist’s name in Comic Sans typefont on hand cut sheets of paper. I think it even was the only artist they featured …
Please forgive the low quality pictures but I didn’t dare enter the booths out of fear of being talked to …
Without wanting to sound cynical I still firmly believe that there is a BIG difference between contemporay art and works by artists who happen to be alive.
Some other thinghs a lot of the galleries could have done better in my humble opinion is the number of works on display. Some booths were so crowded with sculptures and other stuff I didn’t date enter, again, because I was afraid I’d knock the stuff over.
Let’s be positive: Contemporary Istanbul has a lot of potential. Just don’t mention taxes.
December 13th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Absolutely fascinating community of collectors. Have been reading through the blog and surfing the other parts of the site. Who knew that there was a social network for collectors. Smart initiative. Bravo.
Matthew Rose / Paris, France
December 18th, 2009 at 11:23 am
I also love the frames on the 2nd pic!! (especially the one on the right)
btw. have you seen or had echoes from the C.A.R. in Germany? Lots of fun, too!! (although it never claimed to be a world-class event).
More seriously it’s really a pity for Istanbul, I love this city and Turkey has great artists and an interesting ’scene’, it’s a pity they can’t seem to capitalize on that.
Anyway I’m glad I haven’t been there as I was considering it this year, looks like I haven’t missed much. Now let’s hope next year will be better!
December 18th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Nope, I haven’t been to or had reports about C.A.R. … Maybe you want to share some thoughts in that?
While in Istanbul I wondered whether it would be a good idea to have different curatorial process for the fair. While Christian argumented that the really good Turkish artists will be repesented by good international galleries already and that the great galleries from Turkey would probably have been in Miami (the timing was just really unfortunate this year), I believe that there must be some really great stuff happening in Turkey in general.
The question is, how does one get that to the fair? The fair is a money-making-machine. Sqm is expensive. And as far as I heard, sales were not so bad. So where does one go from there?
It has to be said though that the organisation was pretty neat in Istanbul and the fair location was small but good.