Çağla Cabaoğlu Gallery 25th Anniversary Exhibitions: "Echo" and "Resonance"

English (06:46 - 10:07): (06:46) Çağla Cabaoğlu: This year, we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of my gallery in Istanbul. As a second-generation gallery, my own gallery is in its 25th year. It's a great source of pride. This has given me the opportunity to work with many generations, stemming from the era I have lived through. (07:07) As in this 25th-anniversary exhibition, we are actually showing contemporary works from 4-5 different generations. For my age, my greatest experience has actually been witnessing the period in Turkey's art history where the modern and contemporary periods intersect. And, as one of the few galleries, to have been a "player" for so many years. (07:46) At the end of the 90s, Burhan Doğançay had returned from New York. I had exhibited his Bosphorus works series in the gallery. The year I opened the gallery, in my opening exhibition, there was Ömer Uluç, Ergin İnan, Komet, and some very valuable artists who are no longer with us today. I was the only gallerist fortunate enough to open Tektaş Ağaoğlu's solo exhibitions during the time he lived in Turkey. (08:24) When I think about these, of course, I feel like I have witnessed history. That's why I'm very excited. Now, in our future projections, we are very happy to transfer my experience of all this as archival information and as a book to the new generations, both to the team working at the gallery and to the young generations. (08:49) This exhibition also has another feature. For over 20 years, we have been working with the very valuable Fırat Arapoğlu, an art historian, associate professor. He is involved in all our exhibition texts to date and in our artist selections; his ideas and efforts are immense. (09:25) The most exciting thing for us in this exhibition was actually the dialogue between the works of artists from four different generations on a single wall. Fırat wrote very detailed texts about this. And we are sharing these texts visually in the exhibition. (09:50) For this 25th-anniversary exhibition, we are showing nearly 200 works. We gathered works from multidisciplinary artists from different generations under specific concepts. Firstly, the "Eko" (Echo) exhibition; in the gallery, there is a chronological exhibition, and Fırat wrote a text inspired by the "echo" of history and works from the past to the present. (10:30) The other exhibition is the "Rezonans" (Resonance) exhibition. In the Resonance exhibition, we have an installation-placement of smaller-scale works by mostly mid-generation and young-generation artists. Just as I did in my New York and Miami "Cabinet of Curiosity" projects, we made them into a large gallery wall, referencing salon exhibitions. We hung all the works on four large, wide walls, collaging them all the way up to the 6-meter high ceilings at the Architects' Association. (11:32) There, too, the Resonance exhibition... Fırat Arapoğlu created a concept and text based on the vibration and resonance with each other of the artists who have produced work in different media and from different generations. (11:51) These two exhibitions actually complement each other very well, and they all... "Resonance" and "Echo" come together and express a collective meaning in this 25th year. We would very much like for visitors to see both exhibitions. (12:08) In our 25th year, we have a book project with 400 artists. We thought about it with Fırat Arapoğlu. We said, "For our 25th year, our gift to Turkish contemporary art should be to create a book of 400 artists—those who have worked with my gallery and those who have not, but whose productions and lives I have witnessed—and to write about their dialogues with each other." Because, at the end of the day, a 25-year gallery's book can become too much of a family album. But to create a book of artists like this, historically, as 'the artists I witnessed and followed during this period' will be very beautiful. (13:08) Our first project in the next 25 years is this book and the exhibition of this book. This exhibition has already become a prelude exhibition for this book for us. (13:20) Our other project is during the Biennial, in September. It will be an exhibition about ecology and water, including foreign artists, co-created by Fırat Arapoğlu and an American curator. That will also be a large group exhibition. After that, our program will continue with our artists' solo and group exhibitions. (13:50) We have also included young artists in our exhibition programs. We currently have solo exhibitions scheduled through January 2026 for two very young, promising artists whom we trust and work with.