Current Exhibitions

Prélude Eternal

14 September 2024 - 17 August 2025

COLLECTION EXHIBITION
CURATOR: DR. NECMİ SÖNMEZ

Rick Silva, The Silva Field Guide to Birds of a Parallel Future, 2014,
Video: 11’38”, 18 Individual Birds duration: 00’30”, 2014, Video Collection,
Borusan Contemporary Art Collection

The Prélude Eternal exhibition, presenting an up-to-date selection from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, focuses on how spiral cycles, which define human existence, are interpreted by contemporary artists. Evolving regularly since the 2000s through commissions and acquisitions, the collection provides viewers with an in-depth interaction with different formations, issues, and ways of seeing in today’s world, bringing together works by artists who navigate between the physical and virtual realms. Borusan Contemporary challenges conventional modes of exhibition with a new selection of works by artists from Françoise Morellet to Ayşe Erkmen, Rick Silva to Jerry Zeniuk, Axel Hütte to Merve Şendil.

The term prélude, which signifies beginning, entry, and introduction, is used in this exhibition to refer to the recurring spiral forms of existence since the world’s creation. The concepts of beginning, development, reaching a peak, and falling into oblivion are closely tied to the idea of “cyclicality”, a common theme across different cultures and civilizations. This cyclicality, which becomes eternal through constant repetition and embraces new forms of being with each beginning and end, also reflects the dynamics of individuals’ daily lives. An example of this cyclical eternity is the eternal duality between light and dark observed in beliefs from ancient Mesopotamian cultures to the present. Prélude Eternal presents a selection of works by artists that accentuate the unique qualities of the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection and draw attention to the variety in ways of being through metaphors, while shedding light on the relations between the works within this cyclicality and their reflections in daily life.

Curated by Dr. Necmi Sönmez, the Prélude Eternal exhibition takes the trends of the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection as its starting point and invites viewers on a visual journey. This journey addresses the cycle of the building that Yusuf Ziya Paşa began constructing nearly a century ago, known as the Haunted Mansion due to its unfinished state, and which has been reshaped into Borusan Contemporary since 2011.

Please click for the exhibition brochure.

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