Spirals, submarines & myth: Omer Uluc retrospective at Istanbul Modern

Welcome to Al-Monitor Istanbul.

This week’s dispatch explores the legendary artist Omer Uluc’s boundary-pushing universe at Istanbul Modern, spotlights jazz greats on summer stages and charts the rhythms of the city as it sizzles. 

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Thanks for reading,

Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)

P.S. Have tips on Istanbul’s culture scene? Send them my way at nertan@al-monitor.com.

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1. Leading the week: “Spiral, Not Static”

Omer Uluc, “The Submarine and the Bird.” (Photo: Nazlan Ertan)

Few artists in modern Turkish art have wrestled so openly with chaos, myth and material as Omer Uluc. The Istanbul Modern has brought together more than 300 of Uluc’s works in a rare, full-spectrum retrospective that shows him to be an artist who never settled, neither stylistically nor geographically. Curated by Oyku Ozsoy Sagnak and Nilay Dursun, “Omer Uluc: Beyond the Horizon,” presents the artist as a rigorous experimentalist — a painter, sculptor and visual thinker whose practice blurred abstraction, figuration and performance into a singular, evolving grammar.

Born in Istanbul in 1931, Uluc studied engineering before fully committing to art. In 1951, he joined the Attic Painters, a group led by Nuri Iyem, and embarked on a career that would span continents, working in Paris, London, the United States, Mexico and Nigeria before settling down in Paris and Istanbul with his spouse, the journalist and writer Vivet Kanetti.

The exhibition spans six decades, from early ink drawings to acrylic paintings, collages and sculptural forms crafted from materials ranging from rubber and felt to PVC and aluminum. One gallery is modeled after his studio, drawing viewers into the texture of his working world in a blend of research, memory, and reinvention. 

The exhibition’s greatest success is how it maps Uluc’s intellectual and emotional terrain, rather than his artistic biography, guiding visitors from luminous female forms to submarines (a recurring shape he links to his youth in Istanbul), to his grandfather’s maps, and to mortality (in his later years). “Beyond the Horizon” traces a mind continuously engaged in confrontations with the self, form, and death.

Uluc once said, “Where there is death, I am not; where I am, death is not.” Even during two years of intensive treatment for lung cancer, Uluc never stopped working, defiant to the end. He died in Istanbul on January 28, 2010, at the age of 79, leaving behind a body of work that refused finality. 

“Beyond the Horizon” lingers long after you leave it.

Istanbul Modern, Galataport

Through Dec. 12

2. Word on the street: Quenching post-art appetite

Restoran Modern offers great food and drinks perfect for taking a break after an art show. (Photo: Restoran Modern website)

After you’ve admired Omer Uluc’s spirals, it’s time to find something to swirl on your fork. Here are the nearby picks:

• Restoran Modern, the posh terrace restaurant in the Istanbul Modern, offers Mediterranean-meets-Turkish dishes, including a delicious lunch menu, along with a great view and a bartender who knows his way around a cocktail shaker and is happy to share his secrets.
• Gina is your elegant Italian option, with white linens, handmade pasta, and a Gault & Millau nod to prove it.
• Sait Fish Restaurant is for anyone craving refined seafood with a side of Michelin Guide approval.
• Gunaydin serves meat in two distinct ways: as an upmarket steakhouse or as doner and kofte, each in its own space, both reliably satisfying.

3. Istanbul diary

Rugul Serbest, “In the Garden of My Desires,” now at Pi Artworks. (Photo: Nazlan Ertan)

• This is the last weekend to see “Just Die Smiling into My Eyes” at Pi Artworks, Rugul Serbest’s first solo exhibition, curated by the celebrated painter Taner Ceylan, renowned for his works exploring eroticism and identity. The show, Ceylan said, is an intense meditation on how hearts are torn from chests and gazes cut through the soul.
• For a new exhibition, at the Istanbul Research Institute, visit “The Photography Studio of an Adventurous Architect,” a view through the lens of Arif Hikmet Koyunoglu, a pioneering architect of the Turkish Republic who designed some of Ankara’s most iconic early monuments. His photographs include snapshots from war zones, village squares, and family life, tracing the transformation of a nation.
• The Istanbul Jazz Festival returns July 1–18 with a genre-bending lineup, featuring Afro-Cuban jazz legend Chucho Valdés, Max Richter’s ambient orchestration, and Turkish fusion acts. Info and tickets here.