Borusan Contemporary opens new season

ISTANBUL

The exhibition reinterprets the memory of the mansion through contemporary technological systems.

Borusan Contemporary has opened its 2026-2027 season with two exhibitions exploring image, reality, representation and memory, bringing together Italian photographer Olivo Barbieri’s first solo exhibition in Türkiye and a selection from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection.

“Olivo Barbieri: Time Space Geometry,” curated by Dr. Fırat Arapoğlu, brings together five series spanning more than four decades of the photographer’s practice, as well as a newly commissioned series featuring nine ancient cities in Anatolia.

“Haunted,” curated by Borusan Contemporary Director Dr. Kumru Eren, focuses on how artificial intelligence, algorithms, data technologies and digital culture are transforming the contemporary visual world.

Both exhibitions opened on Sept. 19 and will remain on view through Aug. 15, 2027.

“Olivo Barbieri: Time Space Geometry” presents works produced between 1999 and 2023, ranging from archaeological sites and global metropolises to waterfalls, the Alps and the Mediterranean island of Capri.

Through aerial photography and optical interventions that alter scale and perspective, Barbieri distances cities, natural formations and historical sites from their familiar appearances. His photographs transform recognizable landscapes into unexpected and sometimes surreal images, creating a space between reality and fiction and encouraging viewers to reconsider how they see the world.

The exhibition brings together five series: “Time Space Geometry” (2023), “site specific_” (1999-2013), “The Waterfall Project” (2006-2007), “Alps – Geographies and People” (2012) and “Capri” (2013).

Curator Arapoğlu describes Barbieri’s photographic practice as an approach that rethinks the act of looking at a landscape. The exhibition establishes connections between archaeological sites and global cities, the grandeur of nature and human vulnerability, as well as landscape, time, space and memory.

The “Time Space Geometry” series, which gives the exhibition its name, was produced for the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection through a special commission focusing on nine ancient cities in Anatolia. The works are being presented for the first time.

Barbieri photographed Perge, Kibyra, Laodikeia, Hierapolis, Aphrodisias, Ephesus, Sagalassos, Side and Myra, approaching the archaeological sites as visual fields that can be reshaped through contemporary ways of seeing.

The photographs draw attention to the semicircular forms of ancient theaters, rows of seats, stage spaces and the weathered surfaces of stone. Seen from above, the sites can resemble archaeological maps, cartographic plans or stage designs.

Through these images, the ancient cities appear not simply as physical remains of the past but as representations shaped by memory and contemporary visual culture. Large-scale prints create a physical encounter with the historical structures, while a triptych devoted to Aphrodisias emphasizes different experiences of time.

Barbieri said the project gave him the opportunity to photograph nine ancient cities in Türkiye that were once important centers but no longer exist as cities. What remains, he said, are geometric forms shaped by mathematics, space and time

The exhibition then moves from the ancient cities of Anatolia to Barbieri’s other four series, “site specific,” “The Waterfall Project,” “Alps – Geographies and People” and “Capri.”

Running alongside the photography exhibition, “Haunted” examines a different transformation of the image: the increasing influence of artificial intelligence, algorithms, data and digital technologies.

Curated by Eren, the exhibition brings together artists working in new media and technology-based art, including Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Memo Akten, teamLab, Quayola, Zimoun, DRIFT, Marco Brambilla and Daniel Canogar, alongside earlier works by Kemal Önsoy.

Eren said the exhibition does not place technology itself at the center, but instead focuses on the changing position of humans and the ways people see. The works invite viewers to consider how images are produced, what traces they leave behind and which invisible systems shape contemporary life.

The title “Haunted” refers to Perili Köşk, the historic mansion that has been home to Borusan Contemporary since 2011. Construction of the Yusuf Ziya Paşa Mansion was interrupted during World War I, leaving its upper floors unfinished. Over time, the building became known locally as “Perili Köşk,” or the “Haunted Mansion.

The exhibition reinterprets the memory of the mansion through contemporary technological systems. Rather than ghosts from the past, it presents a space where new forms of presence created by data, algorithms, artificial intelligence and machines circulate.