Must-See Exhibitions in Istanbul, Autumn 2024
Olafur Eliasson, Your pluralistic coming together (2023). Exhibition view: Olafur Eliasson: Your unexpected encounter, Istanbul Modern (7 June 2024–9 February 2025). © 2023 Olafur Eliasson. Courtesy the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles. Photo: Kayhan Kaygusuz.
As Contemporary Istanbul, Turkey’s major contemporary art fair, returns from 24 to 27 October, galleries and museums in the capital present some of their biggest exhibitions of the year. Our picks include Leylâ Gediz at The Pill, Doug Aitken at Borusan Contemporary, and Olafur Eliasson at Istanbul Modern.
Gallery Exhibitions in Istanbul
Leylâ Gediz, Stagehand
T H E P I L L ®, Ayvansaray Mah. Mürselpaşa St. No. 181
28 September–16 November 2024
Istanbul-born, Lisbon-based artist Leylâ Gediz sets the stage at The Pill, where she presents new paintings, drawings, and installations that hone in on the concept of theatrical production as a procedural form. Envisioning herself as a stagehand working with props and tools, Gediz takes a directive approach to the viewers in the gallery. She has unrolled rudimentary corrugated cardboard around the building’s columns in a maze-like fashion, while the same cardboard partially covers the floor; in passageways, ribbon-like curtains must be brushed aside.
The setup introduces Gediz’s monochrome assemblage paintings. Unlike her installations, they capture moments of transition or intermission, opening a dialogue between visibility and invisibility, anticipation and completion.
İnci Eviner, Neural Crest of an Island
Dirimart Pera, Meşrutiyet St. No. 99
3 September–3 November 2024
Turkish artist İnci Eviner reflects on the transience of existence in her latest solo exhibition at Dirimart, combining a moving-image work and a sculptural installation.
The titular video, Neural Crest of an Island (2024), is a collage-like construction that superimposes multiple views of Hayırsızada, a barren island in the Sea of Marmara where 80,000 stray dogs were exiled and left for dead in 1911. Eviner combines and animates a plethora of visual referents—among them minarets, animals, plants, puppets, and images of the island—in a surreal manner. Unexpected overlaps result, unravelling hierarchies between living and non-living things.
Rising waters, radiating lights
Zilberman Istanbul, İstiklal St. No.163 Mısır Apartmanı K.3 D.10
19 September–7 December 2024
Rising waters, radiating lights gathers the works of nine artists—Nezir Akkul, Omar Barquet, Sena Başöz, Itamar Gov, Larry Muñoz, İz Öztat, Yaşam Şaşmazer, Hale Tenger, and Eşref Yıldırım—who respond to the intertwined ecological crises of melting glaciers and ice sheets, rising sea levels, and shifting coastal land.
Through video, painting, print, sculpture, and installation, curators Gizem Demirçelik and Nazlı Yayla harmonise diverse perspectives on the evolving environment and our relationship to the places we inhabit. Highlights include Yaşam Şaşmazer’s abstract bodily stoneware forms (‘Kabuk’, 2024, also on view in Zilberman’s booth at Contemporary Istanbul) and Itamar Gov’s series of cyanotype prints (‘Earthly Perseids’, 2024).
Istanbul Museum Shows
Chiharu Shiota, Between Worlds
6 September 2024–20 April 2025
Olafur Eliasson, Your unexpected encounter
7 June 2024–9 February 2025
Istanbul Modern, Kılıçali Paşa, Tophane İskele St. No. 1/1Text
Osaka-born, Berlin-based artist Chiharu Shiota wraps an entire gallery within Istanbul Modern with her signature labyrinthine red web, interspersed with clusters of old-fashioned suitcases. Chiming with Istanbul’s geographical positioning as a bridge between the East and West, Shiota invokes personal and collective themes like home and belonging, movement and connection.
On the top floor of the Renzo Piano-designed museum is Olafur Eliasson’s survey which includes many of his best-known works and installations like Room for one colour (1997) and Sunset kaleidoscope (2005), as well as new site-specific pieces made in response to the colours of the Bosphorus (Dusk to dawn, Bosporus, 2024). Your unexpected encounter places viewer participation and receptivity to light, colour, and movement at the forefront, resulting in surprising and dynamic experiences of the site.
Also well worth a visit is the collection exhibition, Floating Islands (until 13 July 2025), a chronological showcase of the transformation of art in Turkey after 1945, with painting, print, sculpture, installation, and video.
Doug Aitken, Naked City
Borusan Contemporary, Rumeli Hisarı, Balta Limanı Hisar St. No. 5
14 September 2024–17 August 2025
Doug Aitken’s first solo exhibition in Turkey, curated by Jérôme Sans, features seven works the American artist made between 2006 and 2024, from prints and motorised assemblages to multichannel videos and sound installations.
Aitken was a frontrunner of digital and new media art in the 2000s and 2010s, innovating upon both genres and pushing formal boundaries. But by centring human experiences, Aitken navigates tensions between connectivity and isolation, and the unsettling overlaps of technology, autonomy, and freedom.
The exhibition experience is enhanced by the early 20th-century building’s striking architecture, its deep red bricks and castle-like exterior housing Borusan Contemporary since 2011. Also on view in the museum is Prélude Eternal (14 September 2024–17 August 2025), a collection exhibition curated by Dr Necmi Sönmez that focuses on how spiral forms and cycles are interpreted by contemporary artists.
Georg Baselitz, The Last Decade
Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum (SSM), Emirgan, Sakıp Sabancı St. No. 42
13 September 2024–2 February 2025
The Last Decade presents close to 100 large-scale paintings and sculptures by the German artist. Initially working in figurative painting in the aftermath of World War II, Baselitz began his upside-down or ‘inverted’ compositions in the late 1960s, seeking to dismantle the artifice of representation.
The Last Decade enables a recursive reading of symbols and motifs throughout the artist’s paintings, including eagles and deer from his childhood in Deutschbaselitz, golden hands, and his wife, Elke. A recent series, ‘Springtime’ (2020), inspired by Dadaist Hannah Höch, involved Baselitz collaging nylon stockings onto upside-down figures in a comical, absurdist gesture.
Baselitz’s bronze sculptures—with patinated surfaces that appear like rough-cut timber—extend his motifs into three-dimensional form. In the garden, a monochrome trio of heel-wearing figures are seen to lock arms (BDM Group, 2012); while Pace Piece (2003–04) consists of a crudely hewn lower leg, painted with a black shoe and crew sock. —[O]
Main image: Olafur Eliasson, Your pluralistic coming together (2023). Exhibition view: Olafur Eliasson: Your unexpected encounter, Istanbul Modern (7 June 2024–9 February 2025). © 2023 Olafur Eliasson. Courtesy the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles. Photo: Kayhan Kaygusuz.
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