Doug Aitken’s Naked City at Borusan Contemporary presents a selection of seven artworks spanning from 2006 to 2024. Curated by Jérôme Sans, the Istanbul show focuses particularly on cities, as each work explores the modern condition and the paradoxical isolation of today’s hyperconnected world.
Four years after the global outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, which unprecedently brought the world to a halt, this exhibition investigates humanity’s inherent disposition for mobility and its unfolding development in contemporary society. Between motion and immobility, extreme speed and slowness, connection and solitude, the art on view is intended to examine how one navigates the urban, physical, digital, and emotional landscapes of our time. Speaking of loneliness, erasure within the enormous mass of sprawling megacities, and the boundless digital ocean, the show aims to question the direction of humanity, responding to today’s new ways of communicating, connecting, perceiving, and being.
After its debut 17 years ago outside the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it covered the building’s exterior walls with projections, Borusan Contemporary is now showing Aitken’s sleepwalkers (2007) in an interior setting for the first time.
Installed at the entrance of the institution, Ascending Staircase (2024), a permanent work commissioned by the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, leads visitors to the gallery spaces where windows (2007), 3 Modern Figures (don’t forget to breathe) (2018), “Digital Detox” (2020), “Flags and Debris” (2021), and don’t think twice II (2006), Aitken’s piece from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, are displayed in a setting that creates a journey through the building’s architecture.
Located at the historic Istanbul building known as the Haunted Mansion, Borusan Contemporary is devoted to contemporary art and provides a multi-platform program of exhibitions, events, and educational activities based on the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection. The institution has promoted the production of new artworks and publications through commissions and acquisitions since 2011.
To learn more, visit borusancontemporary.com.
