A dream comes true: art museum in Eskişehir

First major modern art museum outside Istanbul is Odunpazarı Modern Müze (OMM) founded by collector Erol Tabanca at his hometown, the central Anatolian city of Eskişehir. No doubt the OMM will become one of the symbols of the city it is located, with its architecture and collection.

As you approach the oldest district in the city, Odunpazarı, meaning wood market, you can spot centuries old historic mansions from afar, all painted in bright colors. With their slanted roofs and tall windows, these old houses suddenly open up to a completely different building made up of large wooden blocks. Resembling the tranquil, wooden designs of the Nordic countries, this shocking building which you have hard time attributing its link to this historic Anatolian neighborhood, is indeed a modern art museum.

The Odunpazarı Modern Müze (OMM) at Eskişehir is one of the top special projects that the art world has been looking forward to for a long time. Its distinct characteristic is that it is located outside Istanbul; moreover, outside the three mega cities, at an Anatolian city. (The Baksı Museum, founded by artist Hüsamettin Koçan at his own village, at the north east Anatolian town of Bayburt, years ago, was the one and only example.)

This small but international museum located outside the metropolises has immediately found its place among the second wave of private art museums in Turkey. Businessman Erol Tabanca from Eskişehir has a huge collection of modern and contemporary pieces. He may not be a very well known industrialist but as the founder of Polimeks Construction, he has undertaken large international contracts, especially in Turkmenistan and he has channeled a portion of his earnings into collecting art. He is known as a significant collector and an active art lover.

Both as an architect himself and as a collector who closely follows the world art scene, he knows that the building of the museum is as important as the inside. For this reason, he has decided to work with an international name, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. Kuma has been affected by the historic texture of Odunpazarı. The design he has developed for this project is tranquil and plain in one aspect while quite ambitious and different in another one. The pine blocks that envelop the building creates a "light" appearance as if the museum was made of timber put on top of each other. This erratic sight enables a fluid atmosphere in the building embracing light and air. You fully feel this liquidity when you enter the building and walk down the individually shaped wooden stairs into the halls and at the atrium right at the center. Indeed the OMM with its large and small halls, with its various heights and volumes, creates new equations to be solved for curators.

Haldun Dostoğlu who prepared the first exhibition of the museum explained us how he came up with solutions to this equation. He has named the exhibition "The Union" (Vuslat) because he sees it as the city uniting with its museum, the collector his dream, art pieces their visitors. Some 90 pieces of Erol Tabanca's 1100-piece collection is being showcased at the exhibition. The pieces are not placed so that it tells a story. "The story here is the collector, himself, Erol Tabanca," said Haldun Dostoğlu. He says one can observe the natural change a collector has undergone in 20 years. The collection first contained more local pieces from our known modern artists and eventually it has evolved into a sum of more contemporary, international, younger, more bold and opposing works. As a matter of fact, in his press conference, Erol Tabanca, while talking about the future of the museum, said the museum will focus more on international and young artists. While staging this exhibition, where some artists are represented with more than one work, Haldun Dostoğlu has put together themes and techniques that communicate with each other and sometimes those that have color and texture harmony.

For instance, in one wall, Erol Akyavaş, Tayfun Erdoğmuş and Hüsamettin Koçan are side by side with their traditional references; in another corner Erdal İnci and a collective called Universal Everything are matched with their very strong videos supported by technology.

For the high ceiling and large hall in the entrance, Japanese artists Tanabe Chikuunsal has been selected. Tanabe has prepared a huge, effective installation with bamboo sticks for this venue. (In other words, the OMM has been launched with the spectacular cooperation of the artist and the architect.

In "The Union," Turkish master painters Adnan Çoker, Ferruh Başağa, Komet, Nuri İyem, Neşe Erdok and Mehmet Güleryüz are present as well as strong names in contemporary art such as Canan Tolon, Taner Ceylan, Kemal Önsoy, Azade Köker; together with young and successful names such as Burcu Perçin and Ansen.

There are wooden sculptures of Rahmi Aksungur, a hyper realist sculpture of Guido Casaretto, they rhino of Erdil Yaşaroğlu and one of a kind painting done by wires of Gülay Semercioğlu.

Yes, this is an exhibition composed of almost 90 percent Turkish artists; but as the exhibition will be renewed other pieces in the collection will be showcased, to meet local and international visitors.

The Odunpazarı Modern Museum is a building rarely seen in Turkey where you can look out to an old neighborhood from its windows where some houses are in ruins. Thus, the building itself, as several other modern museums of today, is an interesting place as much as and maybe more than the pieces exhibited inside.

The museum is interconnected with three historic buildings that have been restored into a small hotel and a chic cafe. The OMM will obviously contribute greatly to Eskişehir which has become a legend with its restoration ability. It will put the city into the map of art of the country and maybe the world. It will become one of the symbols of the city. Eskişehir's legendary mayor Yılmaz Büyükerşen must have noticed this. He attended the opening night of the museum together with more than 1000 guests, some of them travelled by special train from Istanbul.

Actually, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made the official opening of the museum at earlier hours with a limited number of attendees. He drew an Ottoman letter, v, as a calligraphy.

Nobody at the opening reception noticed this detail but the social media had waves of the v letter, hand drawn by the president. Several people were highly bothered with the head of the government in Turkey that took the country to a harsh political climate with anti democratic practices to be included in the museum as such. This is a justifiable reaction. But at the same time, it is a situation that reminds us of the fact that private museums cannot be independent of the equilibriums in the business world.

However, on the other hand, while there are so many beautiful and significant matters to talk about for the OMM, one should not be eclipsed by this detail. At the end of the day, politics is temporary, whereas art and art institutions continue to give us happiness.

*This abridged article first appeared on GazeteDuvar on September 9, 2019.