In Karaköy, tucked into a corner on a street sloping steeply down from Bankalar Street, is the unassuming BM Suma Gallery. The Suma is one of the chillest galleries in Istanbul. It's modest, it's humble, and it's hidden in a dense sea of shops selling hoses, electriccords, wires, screws, and nails.
"Five years ago," Zorana says. "The October Salon became international. It has all the aspects of a biennial--we have foreign curators and all kinds of parallel programs like round tables, performances, and presentations--so we decided to forge some linkages with other big exhibitions; in this case, Istanbul's biennial. Istanbul is a city with enormous possibilities. It's very open-minded in terms of culture and art, and seems to have the brightest future of all the biennials in Europe, except maybe the Vienna one, which will always be on top, I guess."
Five of the ten artists selected won the October Salon Award. The other five were chosen because their work best represented the Salon's theme of that year. Many of the works are both slap-in-the-face challenging and funny. Alesandrija's Ajdukovic, for example, uses all the hackneyed poses of models in advertisements and fashion magazines and dresses up the residents of a nursing home in designer clothes. Captions describe what each person is wearing in classic Cosmo style, yet the faces and expressions on Ajdukovic's models are, of course, far more human than any you find in advertising. Dosic Darinka, who is "wearing a black fur lined greatcoat by rasevic and perfume motion by helena rubenstein" delivers an elegant, wrinkled smile to the camera that succeeds in being both earthy grandma and slightly smart-ass. Ajdukovic recognizes the power of advertising even as she tries to stick it to the industry. Speaking of her own work she says, "Stereotypes are even the starting point for our concepts." In other words, there's no escape even for the artist trying to break them.
Zorana introduced me to two of the artists, Ivan Zupanc and Marko Crnobrnja, who promptly invited me up to their room for a beer. We chatted about their work as Marko strummed the guitar. Marko's contribution to the exhibition are wood sculptures of a pair of children playing. It turns out they modeled on his sons.
"These sculptures," he explains. "Are my experiment with being a new parent. Because when I..." he stops, blushes. "You know, my English is not good for this sort of thing. Forgive me." I encourage him to go on. "Okay, well I call these educational sculptures. I look at them as a communication between my children and me, because I didn't have any experience of being a parent, and I wanted to create my experience of them when they were without me and my wife present. In that sense, it's my fear, my fear and anxiety about what they are doing when they are alone. It's all from my own head, you know, except one scene which is true. We were living on a mountain for a few months--they were in the basement--and I walked in on them playing with an ax! I have a vision for me to make art with them as they grow up, because they are the most interesting thing for me. Their growing up is my media. It's a universal story, I think."
Ivan is showing a group of photos he calls "Inside and Outside."
"It's about a cross," he says. "This cross is on top of one of the biggest Orthodox churches in Europe, the St. Sava in Belgrade. I searched for different views of the cross, from different angles that blocked the church and showed only the cross. So you see it behind cars for example, or behind a fountain. I wanted to catch it in different situations and contexts, and I made a personal story about the cross with these images. The name of this work is Inside and Outside because the inside of that church now is under construction and when I went inside I saw some striking contrasts, with the workers hammering next to holy relics, and it was a strange combination, these workers and this timeless, holy place."
A sidenote: the St. Sava Church is the largest Orthodox church in the world, and still under construction. It also has an odd relationship to Istanbul. In 1595, an Ottoman governor named Sinan had the remains of the saint burned on the hill where the church is now located. When the Serbs selected the site for the church, it was with this in mind.
"Is religion personally important to you?" I ask.
"It's important, but I don't want to think about it. For me, the pictures are not provocative for Orthodox people. It's just my personal view of that cross on the church. It's a universal story because you can see the cross everywhere, from all over the city, just like you can see the mosques from different sides here. It's an open call, maybe from God." He laughs. "Who knows?"
Ivan's series of photos is poetic, like a day-in-the-life of Belgrade capturing all the beauty of ordinary life in the city with the bright gold cross hanging always in the background like a reminder of another world. One of my favorites is a shot of the cross hovering over an orange janitor's shed, the juxtaposition of such humble workers with God suggests maybe that the two are one and the same. But Ivan's photos only work as a series. All of these images, from the crosses reflection in a mud puddle to it's image perched over the top of a clothesline outside a Belgrade balcony, sweep the everyday activities of human life into the realm of the divine.
The exhibition was supposed to open on September 10th, but thanks to the floods, no one is sure that the works even exist anymore. They were being held in a basement in customs, which was swamped, and Suma has been unable to determine if they survived. If they didn't, it's a tragic end for Ivan, Marko, and the others, who were hoping to break into the wider world with the Istanbul biennial. It's very possible the whole show will be permanently canceled, but even if it is, I urge to keep it alive by visiting, via the WEB and doing a Google search on the works of these artists. It's well worth it. We'll keep you posted as news develops. You can also check out the gallery's website at www.bmsuma.com and their blog at www.bmsuma07.blogspot.com. The artists on exhibition are:
Aleksandrija Ajdukovic
Maja Radanovic
Aleksandar Rafajilovic
Marko Crnobrnja
Zoran Naskkovski
Ivan Zupanc
Ana Adamovic
Dragoljub Rasa Todosijevic
SKART
Art Fun Club
Contact Info
BM SUMA CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER .
Beral Madra - Binnaz Tukin - Nilufer Sü lü ner
Voyvoda Cad. Yanikapi Sokak No.3 Kat.2 Karakö y 35005 ISTANBUL
tel. 0090 212 3615861/ fax. 0090 212 3615862 / bmsuma07@gmail.com
by Jeff Gibbs
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