5 Standout Artists Whose Work You Can Buy at the Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair for $10,000 or Less

Istanbul’s art market has had a number of false starts. After a
small boom in 2008, the market suffered major setbacks due to the
political instability of the region. Collectors, dealers, and
artists have been particularly struggling since a failed coup
attempt in 2016, which has been followed by escalating inflation of
the local currency.

Throughout the turbulent period, the Contemporary Istanbul art
fair has been a mainstay. When the event started in 2006, it
was a local market, where Turkish collectors were happy to buy
Turkish art.

But after dealers and buyers began to recognize the power of the
international art market, the tides turned. The fair is now in its
14th edition, and the city is about to enter a new wave of cultural
development, as new and leading corporations have begun investing
in culture. A new museum, Arter, has just opened in the city, and
nine more museums are slated to open in the next few years.

This year the fair welcomes 73 galleries from 22 countries to
present the work of 510 artists. Twenty-three newcomers to the fair
include international galleries such as Galerie Krinzinger from
Vienna, and Paris’s High Art. While the city is nurturing a
homegrown collector scene, the fair is also strategically timed to
capitalize on the international crowd in town for Nicolas
Bourriaud’s much-anticipated Istanbul Biennial.

Below, read about some of the best artworks available at this
year’s Contemporary Istanbul art fair, all priced under the $10,000
mark.

Apolonia Sokol at The
Pill

The work of the French-Danish painter Apolonia Sokol is a
standout at the booth for the Istanbul-based gallery The Pill. Born
in 1988, the promising young artist populates her canvases with
mixed-race people and body-positive beauties that radiate a
captivating strength.

After finishing her MFA in Paris, Sokol moved to Los Angeles
where she became friends with the likes of Henry Taylor and
Elizabeth Peyton, and the energy of their approaches to portraiture
is palpable in her work. Sokol is a relative newcomer to the scene
in Istanbul, having had her first solo show in Turkey with the
young gallery last year. The two paintings on the stand, priced
between $6,600 and $8,800, were waitlisted in the early hours of
the fair’s preview.

Manaf Halbouni at Zilberman
Gallery

The Istanbul- and Berlin-based Zilberman Gallery is showing work
by the young Syrian and German artist Manaf Halbouni, among others.
Born in Damascus in 1984, the 34-year-old Halbouni fled his home
country after skipping out on its compulsory military service; he
now lives and works in Dresden.

Halbouni is a rising star. Earlier this year, he was included in
the Havana Biennial, but he might be better known for causing a
stir in 2017 when far right groups protested the anti-war
installation he created to mark the anniversary of the Allied
bombing of Dresden during World War II.

On the stand were works from his “Maps” series, which consists
of maps found at flea markets and annotated by the artist according
to his own imagined alternate histories. A defunct map of the
German Democratic Republic, priced at $3,800, imagines a world in
which Arabs ruled the country, with territories renamed and
rearranged to suit the fictional history. (Also in the booth was
Fragments, a concrete and stained glass sculpture made
from demolished church in Dresden that was priced at S13,300.)

İz Öztat at Pi
Artworks

The work of the Turkish artist İz Öztat in the booth of the
London- and Istanbul-based Pi Artworks was striking especially for
its poignant sense of political tenor. The sculpture on view,
titled Whip of Justice, is made from
security barriers similar to those those erected around Gezi park
after the Turkish government introduced a controversial ban on
public demonstrations. Suspended on metal hooks, the work also
references the scales of justice.

Priced at $5,000, it is one of the few pieces in the fair
that references the political situation in Turkey. Gallery
director Jade Y. Turanli tells artnet News that the sculpture was
“subtle” enough not to create censorship concerns, especially
because it makes no explicit depictions of anyone in
government.

Born 1981 in Istanbul, Öztat’s is currently enjoying
her first solo show with the gallery. She was
included in the 2017 Sharjah Biennial, as well as Carolyn
Christov-Bakargiev’s 2015 Istanbul Biennial.

Gülsün Karamustafa
at Sanatorium

Karamustafa, one of Turkey’s best-known artists, has spent much
of her 40-year career continuously responding to the country’s
political turbulence. Her presentation at the Istanbul-based
Sanatorium gallery’s booth (in collaboration with the BüroSarıgedik
gallery) spans painting and multimedia installations to photography
and video, and touches on many of her recurring
themes: sexuality, gender, ethnicity, the treatment of
women, and displacement and migration.

As one of the most influential Turkish artists of the 20th
century, her work is in numerous institutional collections,
including the Arter museum. (She also has 15 works in the Tate
collection in the UK.) Works in the stand ranged from $6,700 for
nostalgic, small-scale wallpaper collages of archival photos to
$10,000 for ceramic sculptures.

Ardan Özmenoglu at Galeri
Siyah Beyaz

Ardan Özmenoglu’s memorable works might be familiar, considering
that the artist has exhibited in more than 40 exhibitions since
2006. Her use of Post-It notes as forget-me-not’s include images
taken from Turkish popular culture and her own life. (Among the
images she has used are those of her old Istanbul studio and of the
Republic of Turkey’s founding father, Atatürk.) She also creates
paintings and silkscreens that are sometimes accompanied by
humorous neon lights, which together examine themes of national and
cultural identity.

Her work has had some action on the secondary market, with an
auction record of $18,750 achieved in 2014 at Christie’s
Dubai. The works in the Galeri Siyah Beyaz stand at
Contemporary Istanbul were priced between $6,000 and $10,000.

Contemporary Istanbul runs September 12 through 15 at the
Istanbul Congress Center (ICC) and Convention and Exhibition Centre
(ICEC).

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Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair for $10,000 or Less appeared
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