On November 23rd, the Contemporary Istanbul art fair will open its doors for its sixth edition. Alongside the Istanbul Biennale, the fair is one of the most exiting art events in Turkey that also attracts the attention of an international audience. This market place at the interface between the Orient and the Occident is getting more and more interesting for collectors, curators and art dealers from all over the world. With an extended exhibition area at the new hall of Istanbul Congress Center (İKM), Contemporary Istanbul is acting on this emerging interest and the past success of the fair.

ART FROM BERLIN – a selected presentation of Berlin based galleries – will continue its presence at the fair for the third time and will be exhibiting brand new art works from Berlin in the new hall.

In a Berlin-wide call for attending, organized by the Galleries’ Association of Berlin (LVBG), the galleries Brockstedt, Petra Rietz Salon Gallery, Tammen & Partner, West Berlin Gallery and zone B were chosen by the expert jury of Dr. Matthias Harder (Curator Helmut Newton Foundation Berlin), Cai Wagner (gallery owner and vice president of the LVBG) and Johannes Wendland (art critic at Handelsblatt and Zitty Magazin). These galleries will allow an insight into the current art discourse at the German Capital, as one of the leading art metropolises of the world.

One of the very traditional galleries of Germany for modern masters, Brockstedt will represent its Berlin program with contemporary painters and sculptors such as Ernst Baumeister, Tino Geiss, Johannes Grützke, Rocco Hettwer, Salustiano and Hans Scheib. Due to the great interest of the Turkish audience, the gallery has been participating with ART FROM BERLIN at Contemporary Istanbul continuously from the first time in 2009.
Petra Rietz Salon Gallery is one of the newcomers to the Berlin art scene. The gallery is based on a private place of inspiration and exchange about contemporary art, where artists, collectors, publicists and art lovers come together. At Contemporary Istanbul 2011, Petra Rietz will introduce the paintings of Claus Brunsman (b. 1966 Ahaus/Germany), who is a master student of the famous international artist Jannis Kounelllis. Another student of the art academy Düsseldorf, Eva Schwab (b. 1966 Frankfurt a.M./Germany), who studied in the class of the famous German artist Markus Lüpertz, is also showing her recent paintings at the gallery’s booth. As a special guest Nebahat Erpolat will perform a work on memory, which is directly linked to the gallery’s philosophy and the shown works.
Already known at the fair is the presentation of Tammen & Partner. The gallery will again present new installations by the internationally renowned artist Volker März, who has already entered excellent collections throughout Turkey. Furthermore, the visitors of the fair will be attracted by the magnificent steel sculptures such as “Istanbul Golden Gate” of the German sculptor Herbert Mehler. Additionally, Tammen & Partner is showcasing paraffin paintings by Heike Jeschonnek, contemporary renaissance paintings by Michael Ramsauer and photographs by Christa Frieda Vogel and Ernst Volland. Furthermore new pieces of the Turkish painters Hanefi Yeter and Erdogan Zümrütoglu.

A very new influence on the international art scene is represented by West Berlin Gallery (WBG). The gallery prides itself on being a contributing factor to this unconventional art movement of Berlin, a leading capital in street art. WBG primarily represents and exhibits works from artists accredited by the street. For its first appearance in Contemporary Istanbul, West Berlin Gallery will exhibit outstanding works by three of its top-notch artists: Featuring street art pioneer Giacomo Spazio, rising star Alias and established German street artist Linda’s Ex, West Berlin Gallery’s booth has the ambition to showcase the richness of street art.

For over three years, Gosbert Adler has been working with the complex themes of cars, mobility, and society. In this solo exhibition, many of his diverse series come together for the first time.

Small-format photographs allow glimpses into the private interiors of parked cars, and draw us into the layerings of the private sphere just as reflections in windows superimpose images of the exterior world. These images centered on the driver-car relationship are intertwined, of course, with the outside world. A dry, concrete-paved river bed, darkening food leftovers, and two glass domes all form elements of the exterior world.

The portraits of the drivers demonstrate the intimacy of people in their private spheres. Introverted, concentrated, relaxed, and seemingly secure in their transparent passenger cars, the drivers exist in fact in a membrane permeable to the outside world. Photos of deformities, dents and well-intended attempts at repair are signs of their damaged exterior shells. In these structural disfigurements, the artist depicts the transformation from design to sculptural object.

Diverse techniques, formats, and materials join together in this exhibition just as reflections do in car windows to become an intricate, tightly-melded system.

Gosbert Adler (1956- ) born in Essen, has lived and worked in Berlin since 1981. His works are in numerous collections, including the Folkwang Museum, Essen, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, and the Sprengel Museum, Hanover. He has received numerous awards and prizes including the Grant for Contemporary German Photography from the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation, the Kulturfond Foundation Grant, the Foundation for Art and Culture of North-Rhine Westphalia Grant, and the Werner Mantz Prize for Photography, Maastricht. From 2002–2007, he was a professor in the Fine Arts Department at the Hochschule Hanover; since 2007, he has been Professor of Photography at the Institute for Fine Arts, Braunschweig.

Gosbert Adler was born in 1956 in Essen and has lived and worked in Berlin since 1981. His works are included in numerous collections, i.e. the Folkwang Museum in Essen, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Berlinische Galerie, and the Spregenel Museum in Hannover. He is a recipient of the the Prize for Contemporary German Photography of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation, the scholarship of the Kulturfond Foundation, the scholarship of the Foundation for Art and Culture of North-Rhine Westphalia, and the Werner Mantz Prize for Photography in Maastricht. From 2002 to 2007 he was a professor in the Fine Arts department at the Hannover Academy and in a professor of Photography at the Acadmie of Fine Art is Braunschweig since 2007.

In collaboration with the Cultural Ministry of Hilden and zone B in Berlin, following “Menschen im Bild” (“People in Pictures”), the Kunstraum (Artists’ Space), Hilden, will present another exhibition of contemporary photography at Gewerbepark-Süd. The exhibition is curated by the Co-Founders and Co-directors of zone B, Knut Wolfgang Maron-Dorn and Marc Grümmert.

The exhibition presents a selection of contemporary photography. Spanning over three generations of internationally reknowned artists, whose works are represented in the important museum collections (Folkwang Museum, Ludwig Museum, State Gallery of Stuttgart, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum New York, European Photography Museum Paris), and who were awarded prestigious prizes (Otto-Steinert Prize, Clarles Pratt Memorial Award, Leopold Godowsky Award, Fotosommer Stuttgart). The participants of the younger generation are also recipients of scholarships (Krupp Scholarship, Scholarship of Hanseatic City of Rostock) and included in numerous exhibitions within the group “Absage and die Wirklichkeit”.

“Hauptstrom” (Main Current) presents photography that finds its foundations itself in the opposition to a documentary or other forms of photography attempting to portray reality. Diverse aesthetic temperaments and technical productions methods all join in the ‘current’ of contemporary photography in the way that they align themselves with the traditions of the international avant garde photography of the 20s and 30s and the ‘subjective photography’ of the past century. Where it all comes together through the collective stance that creates images using all the technical possibilities available today in which a unique manifestation of a collective reality is realized.

Thus a multifaceted demonstration of an ‘alternative’ photography – one that opposes the globalized civilization of electronic mass media as an aesthetic assertion of a new subjectivity.