Good Things, 2003, 
3 min 52 s, colour, sound (music: Götterdämmerung)
Courtesy of Upstream Gallery

The part played by the ‘Gothic’ and post-punk subcultures in the work of the Dutch artist Marc Bijl is as important as political activism. In this work, he appropriates a song recorded by the British post-punk band The Sisters of Mercy in the 1980s and reinterprets it with his own band, Götterdämmerung, as the background sound for a series of images of depressed or half-abandoned outlying areas. Each video shot reveals details of public spaces previously covered in graffiti by the same artist which reproduces the lyrics of the song in their entirety, line by line. The counterpoint between the ‘good things’ the song speaks of and the images of outlying neighbourhoods and ‘non-places’ is an aid to reflection on the role of pop as an instrument of protest.

Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys

Dara Birnbaum

Dara Birnbaum

John Sanborn, Kit Fitzgerald (Antarctica)

John Sanborn, Kit Fitzgerald (Antarctica)

Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist

Bjørn Melhus

Bjørn Melhus

Charley Case

Charley Case

Olaf Breuning

Olaf Breuning

Cheryl Donegan

Cheryl Donegan

Ana Laura Aláez

Ana Laura Aláez

Marc Bijl

Marc Bijl

Carles Congost

Carles Congost

Joan Morey

Joan Morey

 Adel Abidin

Adel Abidin

Hugo Alonso

Hugo Alonso

Charles Atlas

Charles Atlas

Jesús Hernández

Jesús Hernández

César Pesquera

César Pesquera

Jorge Galindo and Santiago Sierra

Jorge Galindo and Santiago Sierra

The Success of an Artist

The Success of an Artist

Pera Museum presents an exhibition of French artist Félix Ziem, one of the most original landscape painters of the 19th century. The exhibition Wanderer on the Sea of Light presents Ziem as an artist who left his mark on 19th century painting and who is mostly known for his paintings of Istanbul and Venice, where the city and the sea are intertwined.

Reminiscences of Motifs

Reminiscences of Motifs

Prominent motifs from Islamic art continue to shape contemporary productions with their symbolic conno- tations. The plant ornaments and geometric patterns seen in Kütahya tiles are used in ceramic objects such as vases and jugs as well as in

Istanbul-Paris-Istanbul: Mario Prassinos

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Mario Prassinos liked Istanbul more than the current Istanbulites of today. It is obvious that you can understand this from the article written by her daughter Catherine Prassinos in the Pera Museum's book on the artist.