Photo courtesy Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Collection
The Istanbul Museum of Modern Art has announced the opening of their 10th collection exhibition, Beneath the Same Blue. Bringing together artists from across generations and geographies, the exhibition traces Turkey's contemporary art transformation since the 1940s, while reimagining ways to view the museum's permanent collection. Beneath the Same Blue is organized chronological with sub-thematic headings. Each section invites visitors to move through layers of art history and contemporary art through selections that focus on the aesthetic and intellectual atmosphere of a particular period.
Belonging to his series of stainless steel Artificial Rocks, Zhan Wang's Jia Shan Shi #121 (Artificial Rock) (2007) is part of the museum's collection and on display in the exhibition. The Artificial Rocks works are based on an object symbolic of China’s past, the scholar’s rock, which was traditionally collected by the literati and placed in courtyards or other sites of private contemplation, such as studies. Zhan Wang’s stainless steel reinterpretations of this form draw attention to China’s shifting value systems and the reconstruction of its urban centers. These highly reflective works not only utilize the ubiquitous building material of his native country, but also reflect in a mirror-like fashion the rapid urbanization of modern-day China and its ongoing realignment with the natural world.
Learn more at istanbulmodern.org.
