“What are these pictures stuck up on the walls?”
Piotr ZarębaSarkis, a world famous Turkish artist, thinks this would be the first question, people will ask about his new exhibition Site, open to visitors in Istanbul Modern gallery until January 10. “These are images captured from my past exhibitions held since 19’/70s at museums, contemporary art centers and galleries in different cities,” explains the artist.Sarkis Zabunyan, known as Sarkis, is a Turkish-born Armenian artist. After studying at St. Michel French High School in Istanbul and making degree at Mimar Sinan University he won Paris Young Artists Biennale Prize in 1962 and moved to Paris. In his works of art Sarkis uses photography, installations, watercolor and video. He brings together art and cinema with the mystical traditions of the East.Site is a retrospective exhibition of Sarkis’ last four decades of work. The most significant and dominating part of it are photographs of artist’s former exhibitions (shot by him) and other pictures (landscapes and portraits). They are placed in interiors of gallery like posters on walls in a city environment. “This is an expression – an act – that originates out of desire to blend museum and street with each other,” says Sarkis. Posters are perceived like something new, current, and Sarkis wants to transfer the feelings of his old exhibitions to the present and to give them a trait of newness. He finds them still alive and his aim is to meet all important stages of his career in one place. We can witness almost hundreds of photos selected by the artist from about twenty thousand images. Some of them are incomprehensible for many people, but according to Sarkis, the important thing is to be open-minded and create one’s own perception. “It is like collages in visual arts, like a plot in literature, like leaping from one place to another.”Photographs […]