Sarkis: Site

Istanbul Modern is hosting “Site”, the most comprehensive exhibition ever undertaken in Turkey by Sarkis, one of today’s leading names in contemporary art. The exhibition is being mounted with the contributions of the Promotion Fund of the Prime Ministry. It is being sponsored by Garanti Bank. In addition to being the first time that İstanbul Modern has ever hosted an exhibition by a living contemporary artist, “Site” also gives Sarkis an opportunity to reinterpret all of the different periods of his 50-year career.

Curated by İstanbul Modern’s Chief Curator Levent Çalıkoğlu, “Site” opened on 11 September 2009 and run until 10 January 2010. The exhibition is designed to link all of the spaces of the museum to one another. In “Site”, Sarkis creates a city replete with the evidence of his past in the form of photographs taken from more than a hundred of his previous exhibitions, works that he has invited from European museum collections, and objects that he has been accumulating over the years in his studios.

“Site” gives viewers a chance to become closely familiar with Sarkis’s art and its all-embracing multidisciplinarity. During the “Site” exhibition, not just İstanbul Modern’s Temporary Exhibition Hall but also its Permanent Exhibition Hall, Photography Gallery, and Cinema will be serving as venues for a variety of activities and programs: photographs and films shot by the artist will be shown in the museum’s Photography Gallery; the Education and Social Projects Department will be running a “Watercolor in Water Workshop”; Sarkis will be conducting a “School” for eight young artists; piano concerts will be held in the central plaza of “Site”; Sarkis will meet with viewers in a series of talk; NTV has prepared a comprehensive documentary about Sarkis to mark the exhibition.

Sarkis  “Site”
Kurator: Levent Calikoglu