Exhibitions Releases

New visual and intellectual experiences at the crossroads of science and history at Borusan Contemporary

14 September 2023 Thu

Borusan Contemporary welcomes the new season for the arts and culture scene with two new exhibitions.
As part of its temporary exhibition program, the institution welcomes Mat Collishaw, one of the leading figures in contemporary art, with the show Arrhythmia curated by Alice Sharp.
The collection exhibition program brings together sixty-one works from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection under the heading of Hyper Digital Forces.
Both exhibitions will run from September 16, 2023, to August 18, 2024, and be open for visitors every weekend at the Perili Köşk.

Borusan Contemporary invites the audience to a multi-layered art experience with its exhibitions in the new season for the arts and culture scene.

In Arrhythmia, British artist Mat Collishaw creates a bridge between art and science, allowing these two worlds to converge. Collishaw takes his cue from Albrecht Dürer and Ernst Haeckel, two of the most important figures in arts and sciences, and combines Dürer's Renaissance philosophy and methodologies with Haeckel's 19th-century ideas. Collishaw adds today’s new technologies to this mix in order to disrupt the flow or rhythm of our reactions to the natural environment surrounding us.

Renaissance artists such as Albrecht Dürer believed that observation of nature was crucial for developing our scientific view of the world and in Arrhythmia, Mat Collishaw explores this concept further. Dürer created beautiful drawings of lowly plants at the side of the road giving these seemingly unimportant weeds great significance. Collishaw has breathed life into Dürer’s drawings by creating animations of the plants gently swaying in the wind.

Like Dürer, Collishaw is concerned with looming catastrophe. In his video Even to the End, the once green natural landscape is destroyed by wildfires, while in Heterosis, wildlife takes over London's National Gallery and asks questions of what might become of art in an environmental disaster.

New works inspired by Borusan Contemporary’s location and the marine ecosystem of the Bosphorus

To produce his new charcoal study, Pandora, Collishaw draws from Borusan Contemporary’s context alongside the Bosporus with amazing views of the currents running across the sea. He fed AI text prompts such as “marine organisms” and “Disco Narlia” which are beautiful botanical drawings of new species of microscopic marine organisms discovered by artist and marine scientist Ernst Haeckel. These prompts were combined with Dürer’s The Four Horsemen of Apocalypse (1497) print.

In the artist’s striking kinetic installation Sounding Sirens, he has created an elegant zoetrope, highlighting the overpopulation of native jellyfish species and contrasting these invasive creatures with the trapped octopus, symbolizing the intelligence of nature.

Drawing on key historical figures, Matt Collishaw claims that besides theories, our senses and imagination are necessary to connect with nature. In the exhibition Arrhythmia, the artist uses new technologies to offer new ways of seeing nature and our relationship to it.

Mat Collishaw says the following about his new exhibition Arrhythmia: "I've tried to create an exhibition that acknowledges the exceptional location of the Borusan Contemporary on the fringes of the Bosphorus, and the mounting evidence that climate change is dramatically modifying the planet's landscape and ecology. There is no shortage of information about the impending peril the earth is in but there appears to be a lack of interest in the solution department. I will present a series of vignettes that evoke unresolved conundrums: the solitary voice against haunting indifference, the unimaginable complexity of digital/genetic code, the Sisyphean task of balancing earth ecology, and ultimately, man’s Herculean vanity. Unfortunately, there will be no solutions to our plight. Only the glimmer of a reflection of the riddles we are clumsily attempting to navigate”. 

Director of Borusan Contemporary Dr. Kumru Eren states: "We are delighted to welcome Mat Collishaw back to İstanbul after a ten-year break with a special selection of works, including his site-specific installation in the form of a zoetrope, commissioned by Borusan Contemporary. Collishaw has visualized the irregular heartbeat of nature with help of the artificial intelligence technologies through the path followed by science. Arrhythmia is Mat Collishaw’s summa, the sketchbook of an artist who contemplates nature, science, and history. It is an astonishing and fascinating portrait of the human condition, ranging from melancholy to the climate decadence."

Hyper Digital Forces

Curated by Necmi Sönmez, the Hyper Digital Forces exhibition presents a selection from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, and highlights the experimental approaches of New Media Art shaped by different possibilities of artistic production. Since the 2000s, "digital experiences", which are now part of our daily lives, have cracked the doors open to many types of research that were not previously accessible to creative artists. Borusan Contemporary Art Collection traces the "new visuality" highlighted by the production of digital images, with its disposition that is oriented toward such research. The exhibition puts the images brought forward by this visuality under the magnifying glass through a comparative approach. When neon sculptures, video installations, and manipulated photographs—as different examples of New Media Art—come together with collages, canvases, and works on paper that are shaped by classical production techniques, the differences between the "moving image" and the "still image" simultaneously fall into place. In the context of Hyper Digital Forces, four new works from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, which have not been shown before, will also be on view.

About Mat Collishaw

Mat Collishaw is one of the most significant and compelling artists in contemporary British art. With an early foundation at Goldsmiths College, Collishaw formed part of the legendary movement of Young British Artists. He was one of 16 young artists who participated in the seminal Freeze exhibition organised by Damien Hirst in 1988 and the provocative Sensation show of 1997. 
Throughout his 30-year career, Collishaw has contemplated the nature of the human subconscious and explored ways to influence it through various media. Through optical illusions, paintings, projections, and moving sculptures, the artist creates works and scenarios that directly and unconsciously engage their viewers. The works encourage us to think about fundamental questions related to psychology, history, sociology, and science. Behind the richness and visual appeal of each work, there is a deep exploration of how we perceive and are influenced by the world today through images, and modern technology. Questions regarding behavioural manipulation, programming, and temporal reality all linger in the viewing experience. 

About Alice Sharp

Curator Alice Sharp is the Artistic Director of Invisible Dust, an art and environmental organisation which she founded in 2009. Invisible Dust has pioneered international working between artists and scientists on the environment and climate advocating for the importance of “making the invisible visible”; art’s role in creating wider understanding and awareness towards tackling climate change. Invisible Dust projects include Margaret Atwood for “Under Her Eye” in 2018, Dryden Goodwin’s “Breathe” in 2022/23, “Sea Change” in May 2023, and “Forecast” stories we are telling about the future of the planet with authors Amy Jeffs and Ben Okri. Alice is currently curating “Climate Clock” for Oulu EU Capital of Culture 26.

Alice has worked with many significant scientists and artists including Elizabeth Price, Wangechi Mutu, Jeremy Deller, Fei Jun, Joan Jonas, and Cornelia Parker. Alice is a prominent arts and climate UK speaker including the Insider Magazine event attracting 85,000 viewers worldwide, speaking at Davos in 2020 and for the United Nations Development Programme, Greece, and Romania in 2023 with the British Council. Previously Alice curated exhibitions independently including the Fourth Plinth with Antony Gormley, and Yinka Shonibare in 2008 and Journeys with No Return in 2010 with 16 artists exploring reflections of Turkish migration on contemporary art including Nevin Aladağ, Zineb Sedira, Olaf Nicolai, Mike Nelson, and Nasan Tur touring to the Akbank Cultural Centre İstanbul, Berlin and London.

About Borusan Contemporary
Borusan Contemporary is an institution devoted to contemporary art, providing a multi-platform program of exhibitions, events, and educational activities based on the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection while promoting the production of new artworks and publications through commissions.

The defining characteristic of the institution's activities since 2011 is its focus on international artists who incorporate photography, video, sound, light, and software-based technologies into their artistic practices, and on new media art in its broadest sense.

Exhibitions and events are organized at the Perili Köşk, housing the headquarters of Borusan Holding. In virtue of this positioning, a unique art center has been created within an office paradigm, as well as an innovative and creative model in the business world.

Borusan Contemporary Blog maintains its activities as a digital platform where comprehensive analyses of the works of the artists featured in the collection are published. The events organized in parallel with the current exhibitions bring together the themes addressed by the collaborating curators and artists through perspectives of different disciplines to provide audiences with innovative ways of interpretation.

The Borusan Contemporary Art Store is a popular destination for book lovers; besides it offers a selection prepared for both adults and children, as well as publications related to exhibitions and events. The view of the Bosphorus from the Museum Café on the second floor of the Perili Köşk offers a pleasant time-out for Borusan Contemporary visitors.    

Visiting hours and important information: Borusan Contemporary is open for visitors only on weekends between 10.00 and 19.00.
In addition, guided exhibition tours are organized at 11:00-13:00-15:00-17:00 and booking is necessary via info@borusancontemporary.com for these free tours.
Visitor entrance closes at 18:00 and details about entrance fees and further information can be found on Borusan Contemporary website.

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Rumelihisarı Mah. Baltalimanı Hisar Cad. No: 5 Perili Köşk, Sarıyer, İstanbul.
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