2011 is ending, and with it, a number of great art exhibits at galleries around town. Here are five exhibits you should see before they close at the end of December.

Emre Tandırlı: Sürpriztepe

The cityscape of Istanbul is famous both for the beauty of its panoramic views, and for the eyesore created by massive amounts of shabby prefabricated housing. Turkish painter Emre Tandırlı has managed to reconcile these two apparently contradictory aspects of Istanbul’s appearance in startling fashion, through a series of paintings whimsically entitled Sürpriztepe (Surprise Hill). The title of the exhibit, currently running at the Mabeyn Gallery in Beşiktaş, refers to the common practice of using the suffix –tepe in the names of Istanbul neighborhoods (many of which are located on hills). In Sürpriztepe, Tandırlı takes full advantage of the bright colors of Istanbul’s apartment buildings, which – in his meticulous compositions – seem to blend in perfectly with that of the sky at sunset, after dark, or on an overcast or wintery day.

Tandırlı has done for Istanbul’s housing blocks what the Impressionists, in their day, did for train stations and other seemingly unsightly features of modern life, conjuring up an unexpected beauty from them for all of us to appreciate. Sürpriztepe, true to its name, will fascinate and surprise you.  

When: Until December 31

Where: Mabeyn Gallery

How much: Free

Suretin Sireti

Suretin Sireti, the Turkish title of the Pera Museum’s exhibition entitled Beyond the Apparent in English, refers to the surface appearance (suret) of existence, as well to the more intangible reality (siret) that lies beyond it. Curated by Zeynep Yasa Yaman, the exhibit brings to the public the modern/contemporary Turkish art collection of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, for the first time since the 1994 exhibition 1950-2000, which was exhibited at the Atatürk Cultural Center in Ankara. The current exhibition, taking up two floors of the Pera Museum’s gallery space, includes 60 works by 36 different artists born between 1905 and 1960, thus (like the previous exhibition in Ankara) comprising a retrospective of work by Turkish artists in the latter half of the 20th century. Among the artists represented in this show are Fikret Muallâ, Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Zeki Faik İzer, Tiraje Dikmen, Yüksel Arslan, Komet, Ömer Uluç, Adnan Çoker, Erol Akyavaş and Burhan Doğançay. The works on display, with their great diversity of subject matter and technique, recall those of such painters as Cézanne, Matisse, Kokoschka, and many more. Do not miss this exhibition, a veritable history of post-WWII Turkish art.

When: Until December 31

Where: Pera Müzesi

How much: 10 TL; 7 TL (groups of 10 or more); 5 TL (concession)

Michael Kenna: Magnum Silentium

Magnum Silentium, Latin for “a great silence,” is the name of the current exhibit at Elipsis Gallery by English photographer Michael Kenna. The stunning black-and-white photographs in the exhibit have been taken in such far-flung locales as Venice, Rio de Janeiro, the Sea of Okhotsk off Japan, the Pyramids of Giza, and China’s Anhui Province. With nary a human being in sight, darkness, clouds, mist, snow-clad hills, and silence combine to create the atmosphere of mystery and sublimity that is Kenna’s trademark. An exhibit not to be missed.        

When: Until December 30

Where: Elipsis Gallery

How much: Free

Ceren Oykut: Mayom İçimde

Ceren Oykut’s new exhibit at Artsümer, Mayom İçimde, is a series of works in marker and ink brush depicting city scenes from Istanbul: stone, brick, concrete...Oykut creates Escher-like landscapes in which structures viewed from beneath – “from sea level” – are piled on top of each other in defiance of all physical laws. The title of Oykut’s exhibit, which translates approximately to “ready to go,” literally “with my bathing suit on beneath my clothes,” is a reference to the artist’s frustration at walking on the shores of the Bosphorus with a bathing suit and not being able to swim in this famous waterway. While the cityscape of early 21st century Istanbul may often be overwhelming, it is never boring – and, as always, it is a plentiful source of inspiration for artists like Oykut. 

When: Until December 31

Where: artSümer

How much: Free

Sophie Calle: The Last Time, The First Time

The world-famous French artist Sophie Calle, born in 1953, is known for her series of provocative art projects, which have caused her to shadow complete strangers, to have herself shadowed, and to make telephone calls to names in an address book found on the street. Never one to fear embarking on a journey into others’ private worlds, Calle now enters the world of the (literally or metaphorically) blind with her new exhibit at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum entitled Son Kez, İlk Kez (The Last Time, The First Time.)

In the first part of the exhibit, called “The Last Time,” Calle asks 13 people who have lost their sight to describe the last thing they saw; Calle then presents photos both of her subjects and of the things they have described. Calle was apparently inspired to create this project by a well-known myth concerning the foundation of Istanbul, according to which the Greek colony of Chalcedon (now Kadıköy) was once named the “city of the blind” due to its colonists’ failure to settle on the more fertile site of Byzantium across the Bosphorus.  

The second part of the exhibit is a video installation entitled “The First Time.” In this section Calle depicts the first encounter with the sea of Istanbulites who – as unimaginable as it may sound – have never seen it before in their lives. These touching video portraits of immigrants from Central and Eastern Anatolia who live cut off from the natural beauty of their new home perfectly complement Calle’s portraits of the visually disabled in part one.

For a full-length review of this exhibit, click here.

When: Until December 31

Where: Sakıp Sabancı Müzesi

How much: 10 TL; 7 TL (groups of 10 or more); 3 TL (students and teachers); free (children 14 and under, senior citizens, etc.)