SALON/: LAST CHANCE: SALON/istanbul at Museum Van Loon

July 14, 2012

LAST CHANCE: SALON/istanbul at Museum Van Loon

One of SALON/s beautiful locations is Museum Van Loon on the Keizersgracht, a magnificent private residence built in 1672. The canal house was the home of Willem van Loon, co-founder of the Dutch East-India Company (VOC) and his family in The Golden Age.

In the rooms on the ground floor of Van Loon, like the Blue and Red Drawing Room, SALON/ add contemporary design objects of Dutch/Turkish designers, unexpectedly places in between Van Loons possessions and artefacts.

Star-rising photograph duo Petrovsky & Ramone have made two images especially for SALON/Istanbul; one of them is showed here at Van Loon, the other in Museum Geelvinck Hinlopen. What we see in Van Loon is a big enrolled red Persian carpet, two bare legs sticking out at the end: a body is wrapped, somebody wishes to hide himself for a moment? The picture is called ‘Embrace’, maybe it shows us to embrace the Turkish crafts, it’s culture, and it’s people.

Turkish-Dutch Zeynep Altay makes intuitive and organic embroidery pieces, expressing her personal emotions. On her blog she confesses to feel uncomfortable talking about herself in words, so she uses her embroideries to communicate, but as well to digest misfortune and depression. In Van Loon SALON/ shows several objects Altay made – samples and little storyboards – and a top of greys and black yarns looking like scrubs.

NOMAN presents their research process for their installation OSMAN – showed in the Willet-Holthuysen Museum as part of the SALON/workshop – in the Red Room with its Turkish carpets. The traditional carpet is deconstructed and analysed by NOMAN, driven by the idea what direction and shape the evolution of the carpet could go to in the future. (see pictures below)

Deniz Seyda Tunca designed the Euro memorial coin ‘Tulpen Vijfje’ representing the relationship between the Netherlands and Turkey: on one side of the coin (the Dutch side) shows a fully flowering tulip and the backside (the Turkish side) shows a young, still closed tulip as a metaphor for the origin of the tulip. This is just one of many metaphors Tunca integrated in the coin.

Spread over the SALON/ locations are the videos of young Turkish Film students of the Istanbul Kultur University who have been selected for the 2012 TENT awards in Rotterdam. Here we can see the video of Kagan Ataseven.

And in the diner room product designer Lizan Freijsen. Stains and mildews caused by leakage in the house fascinates her deeply. She shows a serie of carpets, inspired by the richness in variation and form of different kinds of lichens that live on walls, trees and stone surfaces.