The gallery occasionally works without curators, meaning that no one chooses the artworks.
In this, the main aim of the founders is evident: They want to stay independent and free in the art scene.
While Turkey is still developing in terms of art and art work, artists are seeking new venues to exhibit their works, often facing hardships in the process.
Sanatorium Art Gallery, however, is trying to be different as it struggles to exist without any sponsorships and dependencies in the free-for-all art scene.
They do not own a huge place in Taksim – the gallery is just a small venue in a small apartment.
They do not want to limit their art with the “venue,” but in the meantime they value the meaning of the place. They believe that venues have their own souls, but they are not focused on this because they always want to stay independent.
The gallery signifies an independent movement in the art scene, when chaotic hardship environment reigns in the current situation.
Sanatorium continues to create and produce like always and it shows it with its new exhibition.
The “For What?” exhibition, which is open until Aug. 31 at the Sanatorium Art Initiative Contemporary Art Gallery, is the result of an attempt to trigger the basic impulse which underlies our present and future works following the questions which we have directed to ourselves in order to refresh our memory.
The answers that the artists want to reach are not concerned with the end results but rather with the processes which create them. More precisely, they are reflections of the creation process itself along with the inner forces that encourage us and push us to the resulting condition. Furthermore, they are not only related to the impulse to create art, but also to the concern of making this process more effective by using art’s influence and force of transformation.
“For What?” gives the opportunity to perceive the reasons for creating our works instead of defining them. In this context, our concerns during the creation process make more sense than the works in the exhibition.
The exhibition, including works from artists Can Ertaş, Guido Casaretto, Koray Ekremoğlu and Tunca Subaşı, will be open until the end of the summer at the Sanatorium Art Initiative Contemporary Art Gallery.
The earlier exhibitions at the gallery focused on Turkish contemporary art. For example, Tunca Subaşı’s exhibition, named “Little Boy,” took place at the gallery and drew attention while it also raised eyebrows. In the exhibition, by creating Little Boy’s memory, the artist pointed out the irony in the name of world’s first atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
The point of origin for the artist’s works was the sarcastic attitude that considered the name “Little Boy” suitable for an atomic bomb, an attitude that you can come across easily in the present day.
While he criticized how political thoughts and events related to various periods become materials for popular culture, he used sculpture, installations and paintings to analyze the retro images of the period.
Tunca Subaşı is also among the founders of Sanatorium Art Gallery.
Subaşı, who has created many projects in Turkish Contemporary Art scene, lent his artistic productions to the Sanatorium Art Initiative and Platform and presented his sixth solo exhibition to the viewers.
The exhibition, “Family Lounge,” was a domain in which Sanatorium shared the experiences and works of 10 international artists who work on the family concept.
This domain wished to offer alternatives to the limited definition of family restricted to the “nucleus.”
Artists who gave inspiration to the others with their experiences, comments, and critiques in the creation process of families, shared the limitlessness of the force of human creation and the efforts of reflecting it to daily life, home and families.
Artists who participated in the exhibition curated by Milen Nae are from Argentina, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Turkey.
Argentine artist Oriane Eliçabe’s documentary photography work, “Lesbian Mothers,” which she produced with 10 lesbian families from three countries in which the formation of homosexual families are legally permitted is just one of the remarkable works included in the 18 for the LGBTT honor week exhibition “Family Lounge.”
Also drawing attention was Lithuanian Ugnius Gelguda’s work “Living together” which could not have been exhibited in his country due to the law prohibiting the manifestation of homosexuality in the public sphere for the protection of the psychological and moral condition of children and youngsters.
The first thing that strikes you after entering the Sanatorium Art Initiative Contemporary Art Gallery is a four-meter-high picture of a dressed child made by Subaşı.
But the title “I could not remember” creates more questions than it answers. Is it a look back into the artist’s past or something completely different? Upstairs there is a painting of Pope Benedict XVI wearing blue clothes and titled “Pope Smurf.” Is there a deeper connection between these two paintings or do they even need a connection?
The “For What?” exhibition, which will be open until Aug. 31, is often confusing. Misleading photographs and the silhouette of a human head at the stalk of a rake underline the certainty that a viewer may never find out what this is all about.
According to the artists Ertaş, Casaretto, Ekremoğlu, and Subaşı, their exhibition “is the result of an attempt to trigger the basic impulse which underlies our present and future works following the questions which we have directed to ourselves in order to refresh our memory.”
They admit, however, that their concerns during the creation process “make more sense than the works in the exhibition.”