Issue

Istanbul: The Center Cannot Hold

Istanbul: The Center Cannot Hold
Installation view of OLAFUR ELIASSON’s Sunset kaleidoscope, 2005, wood, steel, mirrors, motor, color-effect filter glass, 185 × 200 × 46 cm, at Istanbul Modern, 2024. Photo by Kayhan Kaygusuz. Courtesy the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles.

Sitting unapologetically (some might say hubristically) on the banks of the Bosphorus, Istanbul Modern is the face of contemporary culture in Turkey’s largest metropolis. Recently rejuvenated, the museum’s presence continues to grow as a kind of intercontinental beacon, showcasing works by a host of major international artists. Last June, its halls opened to Icelandic Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s ambitious solo exhibition “Your unexpected encounter,” replete with object-oriented studies of vanishing glaciers—including a stark bronze sculpture The presence of absence pavilion (2019), an inverted cast of a melting block of Greenland ice.