Cornucopia Magazine's online guide to the best of the arts in Istanbul

“Beyond the Apparent: A Selection from the Art Collection of the Central Bank of Turkey”

2 November – 31 December 2011

While good PR is in short supply for European and American banks these days, their Turkish counterparts are having a rather better time of justifying their position in society. The economics help, of course, and measures taken during the 1990s are proving prescient today. But the Turkish State’s gradual retreat from the cultural sphere since the 1980s has also left space for private firms to install themselves in the art-loving public’s affections: Akbank do Jazz and cinema, Garanti have SALT, Yapı Kredi have their gallery and publishing house, as do İş Bankası. But one of the most established collections of Turkish art belongs to the Central Bank itself and in the Bank’s 80th anniversary year part of the collection is being put on public view.

Karaincir Beach, Turan Erol. 1983

“Beyond the Apparent: A Selection from the Art Collection of the Central Bank of Turkey” is another excellent offering from the Pera Museum. Despite being able to choose from a comprehensive collection, curator Zeynep Yasa-Yaman has avoided the trap of trying to tell a grand narrative of modern and contemporary Turkish art. The exhibition even rejects a strict chronology, though the four distinct spaces on the top two floors of the Pera have been used to form sub-groups among the works. On one wall, for example, there is a selection of abstract expressionist painting by Turkish artists who were based in Paris during the mid-20th century. For visitors touring the entire museum, this makes for a compelling comparison with the academic figurative paintings of Osman Hamdi Bey, who trained in Paris at the end of the 19th Century and whose paintings currently hang in another exhibition two floors below. Yet such points are not laboured, and instead of text panels offering a potted history of art, the paintings (interestingly, it is almost all painting) are contextualised by quotations that respect the visitor’s ability to make their own connections. How the artists have had their own work described individually is, of course, another matter.

Untitled, Canan Tolon. 1995. Mixed technique on wood

Nearly all the internationally-known, big-name Turkish artists are here. To skim only a few off the top, there is one of Burhan Doğançay’s Ribbons series, with its references to posters peeling off the billboards on the New York subway mixed with the cursive flow of Islamic calligraphy; an organic, abstract landscape by Canan Tolon; and two of Selma Gürbüz’s more simple, almost monochrome works very different to her work currently for sale in Dubai. All in all 36 artists are exhibited here in 60 works, and it doesn’t take the mathematical brain of a banker to see that there is therefore the chance to contemplate most artists’ work in more than one example.

The Dream of Angels, Selma Gurbuz. 1991

The most striking thing about the entire collection is how little the artworks have in common visually, and, as the title suggests, that is really the point of the exhibition. ‘Beyond the Apparent’ has lost something of its impact in translation from the Turkish, ‘Suretin Sireti’ – an unusual pairing of two terms in Islamic philosophy which could be rendered more literally and clumsily as ‘the interior yet externally discernible morality of analogous representation.’ Not such a catchy exhibition title, and only worth mentioning to give a sense of the serious and intelligent intention of the show, which does translate well into the gallery space.

Triangle, Alaettin Aksoy, 1988

With the addition of ‘Beyond the Apparent’ there may have never been a better time for fans of Cornucopia to spend a day at the Pera. The permanent collection contains some charming Kütahya pottery very similar to that described by John Carswell in our latest issue, 46 ‘Labour of Love’. The new ‘Intersecting Worlds: Ambassadors and Painters’ collection exhibition is fascinating and ties in brilliantly with ‘Osman Hamdi and the Americans,’ on the floor above, co-curated by Prof. Robert Ousterhout. The subject relates to Prof. Ousterhout’s new book ‘John Henry Haynes: an archaeologist and photographer in the Ottoman Empire,’ published by Cornucopia (and available at all good book stores, or at a discounted price for subscribers right here). Also, don’t miss the Pera’s new ‘Chamber Music’ concert series. The opening performance contained some questionable choices, but you can’t expect a lot of gravitas from a brass ensemble who call themselves the ‘Golden Horn’ quintet, and the acts playing over the following weeks do look more inspiring.