BIENNALS:14th Istanbul Biennial

The 14th Istanbul Biennial takes at least three days to visit fully. Works by over 80 participants from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and North America displayed in over thirty venues on the European and Asian sides of the Bosporus. “SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms’’, takes place in museums as well as temporary spaces of habitation on land and on sea such as boats, hotels, former banks, garages, gardens, schools, shops and private houses and opens to the public from 5/9-4/11/15.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: 14th Istanbul Biennial Archive

 

There are venues where the visitors will encounter a group exhibition, such as Istanbul Modern, ARTER, the Italian High School, and the Galata Greek Primary School, but most locations host the work of a single artist or artist collective. The visitor will need at least three days to visit all the spaces of the exhibition and he’ll see over 1,500 artworks, including commissions by artists as well as other materials from the history of oceanography, environmental studies, marine archaeology, Art Nouveau, neuroscience, physics, mathematics and theosophy. Works at the Biennial range historically from an 1870 painting of waves by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a new work by Füsun Onur where a poem is heard on a moving boat, up to a cultural meeting point between Chicago and Istanbul by Theaster Gates, the work of Christine Taylor Patten, a series of 1,000 tiny one-inch square drawings titled “micros” with minimal material. Anna Boghiguian’s “The Salt Traders”, a grand, sculptural installation of old sails, paintings, drawings, fragments of a boat and sound recordings, Cevdet Erek’s new installation “A Room of Rhythms – Otopark” in an old car park built in 1940 in Tophane, William Kentridge’s new multi-channel video and sculptural installation, inspired by the presence and exile of Leon Trotsky on Büyükada island in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s and Adrián Villar Rojas who creates monumental sculptures emplaced in the sea by the shore of the Trotsky House in Büyükada.

 

Info: 14th Istanbul Biennial, SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms, Curator: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Duration: 5/9-1/11/15 (24/9 Closed), List of Spaces & Hours, www.iksv.org