Posted by: banu-kucuksubasi

Antik Aş.; one of the pioneer auction houses in Istanbul hosted its 260.th auction which is also the second contemporary art auction of the company!!! 191 out of 200 works had been sold on Sunday March 7th at Swissotel-Istanbul!!! Attandence was extensive..

After selling the first Turkish artist alive over a million USD (Burhan Doğançay/ ‘The Blue Symphony)at the end of the last year, this time Antik Aş. reached aproximately 1.4 million USD with a masterpiece of Erol Akyavaş named ‘The Siege’ (266x385cm) dated to 1982.The second runner up was Ömer Uluç’s –who is recently deceased- ‘Nude’ with apr.230 thousand USD and the third was the ‘Abstract Composition’ of Abdurrahman Öztoprak which was sold for apr. 200 thousand USD.

I found Mübin Orhon’s – whose works are also known through Europe- ‘Red’ dated to 1975 very inspiring with it’s vividness which nearly could be seen through the eyes of the blind!!! This vividness costed 160 thousand USD to a collector.
One of the successful sales was the work of Selma Gürbüz, a young and promising artist, with the name of ‘Far-eastern Figures’ consist of styled women and wave depictions floating around a setting sun which we may refer to Japanese national flag.It was sold for apr.63 thousand USD which is a good amount for a young artist in Turkey.

For me the hit was made by Gülay Semercioğlu’s ‘The Red Eye’ that had begun with 10 000 USD ended up 30 000 USD. Gülay Semercioğlu’s works are usually made with wood-nail-wire wowen refering to crafts and women.

There were also works of international artists like Anish Capoor, Damien Hirst, Armand Fernandez, Zhang Dali between apr. 80.000-25.000 USD that I found very reasonable. A video performance of Haluk Akakçe and photos of Youssef Nabil,Eve Arnold,İzzet Keribar, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Çerkes Karadağ, Saygun Dura, Lale Tara, Mehmet Günyeli was sold between apr. 35 000-1000 USD which is a very good development for Turkey since these kind of artistic disciplines are not yet very popular among Turkish collectors.

Speaking of Turkish Art -contemporary or classical-and comparing it to the Western Art one should consider that Turkish Plastic Arts has a past of a little more than 150 years. So when it’s qualified in these basis the development is worth to admire especially the young artists who are eager to catch up with the international standards and tendencies involving art. The works of these artists might make peaks in a very short term for the art market and the artistic attempts of Turkey tends to progress fast as there will be an auction by Sotheby’s over Turkish Contemporary Art in April which might be full of surprises.

Banu Kucuksubasi/March 2010


Source: http://www.sm-artly.com/Default.asp?P=0&L=2&K=0&K1=3