Contemporary İstanbul, a well-established modern and contemporary art exhibition and fair, took place for the fourth time on Dec. 3-6 at the Lütfi Kırdar Congress and Exhibition Center in Harbiye.Its noble mission was to promote cultural and artistic life in Turkey by bringing together Turkish and foreign artists, national and international art galleries and museums, private art collectors and critics, as well as media and art lovers.

During its short run the event proved itself as a dynamic tool for promoting international contemporary art in Turkey and Turkish artists abroad while raising awareness about it in society at large. “We have recently seen that contemporary art has gained prestige,” says Contemporary İstanbul executive board chairman Ali Güreli. “The number of collectors is increasing, and young collectors are showing interest in the market.” Artwork valued at $12.5 million was displayed at Contemporary İstanbul 2008.
The number of visitors increases from year to year, and more than 50,000 people are believed to have attended Contemporary İstanbul 2009 -- or CI’09, as its organizers refer it -- during the three-day exhibition. Alone, this made it quite an event, but still more important: CI’09 took place on the eve of 2010, expected to become a very special year for İstanbul since it was chosen a European Capital of Culture. As such, the fair has further contributed to İstanbul’s development as a prominent center of world culture and a dynamic partner in shaping global trends of art.

Sponsored by Akbank Private Banking, CI’09 brought together over 70 national and international art galleries to exhibit more than 300 works of contemporary artists from different parts of the world while creating opportunities to promote İstanbul’s prime museums and art associations including the Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Akbank Sanat, İstanbul Modern, the İstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and the Doğançay Museum.

Art galleries from Turkey offered the majority of exhibitions in the fair, ranging from such renowned İstanbul galleries as Galeri Baraz, contributing relentlessly since its foundation in 1975 to promoting Turkish art abroad; Pi Artworks, founded in İstanbul in 1998 and recognized as one of the leading contemporary art galleries in İstanbul; Alta Fine Arts, established to present distinguished modern and contemporary artwork ranging from Classical Modernism to Pop-Art; and dem-art, possessing a rich collection of various famous Turkish painters. Besides İstanbul, known for its love for art, galleries from Ankara, Antalya and Bodrum staged their exhibitions as well.
Germany participated with six art galleries from Berlin displaying works of German contemporary artists in the Art Forum Berlin section, and galleries from the US and Canada displayed their works as well. The Middle East was represented by Iran, Syria and Dubai, while Syrian contemporary art in the New Horizons section was displayed for the first time in Turkey. Another debutant at the fair was Ukraine, the only participant from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), though artwork from Russian painters was displayed by the Sandmann Gallery from Berlin.

Still, it’s the Triptych Gallery from Kiev that displayed for the first time in Turkey the works of its two artists -- namely Anna Krivolap and Serhiy Savchenko. Triptych became one of the first privately established galleries back in 1988. Its main focus is contemporary art, while the philosophy is support and the promotion of highly professional artists. Krivolap and Savchenko are young and talented and enjoy an established reputation both at home and abroad. They both belong to the new generation of post-Soviet Ukraine whose life philosophy was shaped by modern realities of the country’s national development. The vividness of their manner of free painting combined with intense and energetic colors reflects the powerful change the world around them is in the process of undergoing.
Krivolap (http://akrivolap-akrivolap.com) is a young and attractive lady of striking Slavic appearance. The artwork she had brought to İstanbul is as strikingly colorful and individual as she is herself. It carries the viewer into a world of youth, sun and festivities. Painted in a brave and uncompromising style, the canvases garner attention by their saturated sunny colors of ultramarine, hot yellow and red while creating new and powerful images of her native Kiev (Blue Horizon) and Gurzuv in the Crimean Mountains.

Krivolap graduated from Ukrainian National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in 2001 but started exhibiting her artwork as a student. To date, she has displayed her work in about 20 exhibitions in Ukraine, Georgia, Germany and the Netherlands. Her early work is often associated with non-figurative painting, which was established in the early ’90s in Ukraine by a group of artists called The Painting Reserve. Her father, Anatoly Krivolap, a well-known artist himself, was one of its founders. Anatoly Krivolap’s early work, bright abstract canvases, are often associated with the group’s guiding philosophy.

Since 2000, she has taken an interest in action art, in particular body art, and several works were displayed at CI’09 as well (“Plastic Variation”). Young bodies painted by Krivolap seem to “animate” their painting and transfer color combinations into a real space.
The works of Savchenko (www.savchenkoart.com) seem to be more sophisticated while reflecting his perspective on the world of a young and successful male individual. The human body in different variations is the prime focus for the artist, and his canvases displayed in İstanbul explicitly show this (“Prisoners”). Critics believe the combination of color and form is his strong point while the focus of his work is on everyday human behaviors. Still, the striking bright colors and overtones he applies (“Chorus,” “Triptych”) reveal to the viewer the music rather than just the body art.

A variation of rich and contrasting colors such as red and white animates his oil on canvas “Lobster Mediator” from his Animals series, while reflecting the artist’s clear and open position on life.

Savchenko is from Lviv in western Ukraine. In 1998 he graduated from the Lviv Academy of Arts but started participating in group exhibitions both in Ukraine and abroad as a student. Since then his artwork has been on display more than once in Europe, America and Asia. He is a self-made man, and he comes from a family of Soviet engineers, who hardly had anything to do with art. He started painting and joined the applied arts college in Lviv as a teenager, and it happened to become the start of his career -- apparently quite a successful one.