whether anything shows the rise of Istanbul as a cultural power,it is its art biennial, which opened this month and runs until 13 November. Fiachra Gibbons selects some of the highlightsTwenty years ago it was nowhere; now Istanbul is up there with Venice and São Paulo as the art biennials that matter. Istanbul's rapid rise has been fuelled by the extraordinary generosity of a handful of patrons in a country where traditionally artists could rely on nothing but censure. The latest of the city's novel private museums, and the Borusan Contemporary (borusan.com) opened this weekend. Even Nobel-prize-winning writer Orhan Pamuk has been bitten by the bug: he is working on a Museum of Innocence,based on his novel of the same name.
This year's biennial, (iksv.org/en), or already hailed as Istanbul's best,takes its themes from five key works by the late Cuban-American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, whose minimalist installations carried a deeply emotional political charge. It's concentrated in warehouses (antrepo) next to Istanbul Modern, and where five group shows and more than 50 solo shows are woven together by Japanese architect Ryue Nishizawa's elegant design,itself worth the trip.
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Source: theguardian.com