ISTANBUL MODERN TO HOST MAJOR SARKIS EXHIBIT
Today’s Zaman
12 August 2009, Wednesday
Turkish-born Armenian conceptual artist Sarkis.
The Ýstanbul Museum of Modern Art will host a comprehensive
retrospective of works by well-known Turkish-born Armenian conceptual
artist Sarkis next month.
Born Sarkis Zabunyan in Ýstanbul in 1938, the Paris-based artist,
the recipient of the 1967 Prix de la Peinture a la Biennale de Paris,
is best known for his audiovisual installations.
Titled "Site," Sarkis’ upcoming show will cover all phases of
the 70-year-old artist’s half-century career. In the exhibition,
scheduled to open Sept. 10, Sarkis will review the different periods
of his art together for the first time in an attempt to reinterpret
and reconstruct them, Ýstanbul Modern said in a written statement.
Set to run through Jan. 10, 2010, the exhibition will be "a lavish
audio-visual feast whose menu begins with the gouache studies on
paper that the artist did in the early 1960s and continues with his
pitch-dark installations of the 1970s, with his institutionally
critical arrangements of the 1980s, with his neon studies of the
1990s and finally with his cross-cultural, interdisciplinary work,"
the museum said.
Sarkis will rebuild Ýstanbul Modern’s exhibition spaces into "a
vast city filled with evidence of his own past" for the exhibition,
"bringing conceivable aspects of Ýstanbul — locations, figures
and events — together" in his works, which will be summoned from
various museum collections, for the exhibition. "Site" will feature a
selection of Sarkis’ works from his own studio and from such leading
art museums and institutions as the City Museum of Modern Art in
Paris, the Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation (MUMOK) in Vienna,
the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Surp Pýrgic Armenian Hospital Museum
of Ýstanbul and the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt in Germany.
An extensive program of sidebar activities organized by Sarkis
at the museum will complement the works on display throughout the
exhibition. The museum’s movie theater will also offer a selection
of films that influenced the artist’s career.