Landscape, Data, and the Borusan Collection: An Overview
Landscape has a strong representation in Borusan Collection, especially in the form of photography.
Chen Jiagang, Axel Hütte, Olaf Otto Becker and Michael Kenna are only some of the artists whose
body of work constitutes the backbone of this theme in the collection, thus Benjamin Weil’s
choice of Thomas Ruff’s Jpeg Li02 as a departing point for “Datascape” is not coincidental.
Ruff’s approach to photography is revolutionary, particularly with the way he transforms and
overthrows the semiotic relationships. Jpeg Li02 is nearly a mockery of the relationship between
reality and its representation, of our belief in the accuracy of what the camera is ready to deliver. The
constructed image, either by the artist or the camera, is in fact only a collection of digital data.
Burak Arıkan’s Collector-Artist Network: Phase III is another collection piece included in “Datascape”
that relies on data collected by the artist himself. As Arıkan regularly updates his data, the work
becomes a reliable statistical source for an accurate analysis of the art market and its collecting
behavior, thus rendering it also functional beyond artistic context.
Data in the Borusan Collection is either generated or utilized in a variety of ways by a variety of artists.
Alejandro Almanza Pereda’s 153.68 Net Hours is the sculptural visualization of a calculation. The
amount of electrical energy that the amount of coal placed in the light bulb cage generates is
sufficient to light the bulbs for this amount of time. Tim Bavington transforms music into vertical
bands of color to create his paintings, thus transforming aural data into visual data. Yağız Özgen, a
young Turkish painter, constructs his 8-bit Color Palette Entries by making use of color palette inputs
he finds on the internet and in program interfaces, whereas a great international master, Manfred
Mohr, creates algorithmic digital paintings that constantly change through time.
Some works in the collection by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer collect data instead of generating it, like
Please Empty Your Pockets and Pulse Index; while the former collects the images of personal objects
selected and submitted by the viewers themselves, the latter collects their fingerprints, creating a
database and building an overview, a “landscape” of the viewers’ biographical markers.
Today the major portion of the landscape we are exposed to is much less like the natural landscape
depicted in a 19th-century oil painting and increasingly artificial and data-based: architecture,
engineering and computer technology expand and redefine the boundaries of the physically
perceivable reality. “Datascape” is a great tribute to and illustration of how this relationship
technically, formally and conceptually affects artistic production. Many of the works
in the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection are no exception to these developments.
İpek Yeğinsü, 2013
Landscape has a strong representation in Borusan Collection, especially in the form of photography.
Chen Jiagang, Axel Hütte, Olaf Otto Becker and Michael Kenna are only some of the artists whose
body of work constitutes the backbone of this theme in the collection, thus Benjamin Weil’s
choice of Thomas Ruff’s Jpeg Li02 as a departing point for “Datascape” is not coincidental.
Ruff’s approach to photography is revolutionary, particularly with the way he transforms and
overthrows the semiotic relationships. Jpeg Li02 is nearly a mockery of the relationship between
reality and its representation, of our belief in the accuracy of what the camera is ready to deliver. The
constructed image, either by the artist or the camera, is in fact only a collection of digital data.
Burak Arıkan’s Collector-Artist Network: Phase III is another collection piece included in “Datascape”
that relies on data collected by the artist himself. As Arıkan regularly updates his data, the work
becomes a reliable statistical source for an accurate analysis of the art market and its collecting
behavior, thus rendering it also functional beyond artistic context.
Data in the Borusan Collection is either generated or utilized in a variety of ways by a variety of artists.
Alejandro Almanza Pereda’s 153.68 Net Hours is the sculptural visualization of a calculation. The
amount of electrical energy that the amount of coal placed in the light bulb cage generates is
sufficient to light the bulbs for this amount of time. Tim Bavington transforms music into vertical
bands of color to create his paintings, thus transforming aural data into visual data. Yağız Özgen, a
young Turkish painter, constructs his 8-bit Color Palette Entries by making use of color palette inputs
he finds on the internet and in program interfaces, whereas a great international master, Manfred
Mohr, creates algorithmic digital paintings that constantly change through time.
Some works in the collection by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer collect data instead of generating it, like
Please Empty Your Pockets and Pulse Index; while the former collects the images of personal objects
selected and submitted by the viewers themselves, the latter collects their fingerprints, creating a
database and building an overview, a “landscape” of the viewers’ biographical markers.
Today the major portion of the landscape we are exposed to is much less like the natural landscape
depicted in a 19th-century oil painting and increasingly artificial and data-based: architecture,
engineering and computer technology expand and redefine the boundaries of the physically
perceivable reality. “Datascape” is a great tribute to and illustration of how this relationship
technically, formally and conceptually affects artistic production. Many of the works
in the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection are no exception to these developments.
İpek Yeğinsü, 2013