Jérôme Sans . Naked City, Doug Aitken

Naked City, Doug Aitken
Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul

Exhibitions Curator

Exhibition "Naked City", Doug Aitken
Curated by Jérôme Sans

14 September 2024 - 17 August 2025

For Doug Aitken’s monographic exhibition Naked City at Borusan Contemporary, artworks covering the period from 2006 to 2024 are exceptionally brought together to create a site-specific journey through the architecture. Since the 1990s, the internationally renowned American artist has been pushing the boundaries of the forms in which art can exist, investigating the intricacies and ambivalence of modern life and hyper-connectivity, the meaning of freedom in neoliberalist globalized society and its possible consequences on isolation, as well as the increasingly porous relationship between humans and technology. By putting people at the heart of his stories, he creates experiences that confronts the individual with the landscape and with others. With a tinge of 1960s utopia, the American artist seeks to reinvent a free and harmonious society, approaching every project in a unique, all-embracing, complete way. Verging on the sublime, his artworks are about living, reproducing moments of grace and collective dazzle.

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Four years after the global outburst of the coronavirus pandemic which unprecedently brought the world to a halt, this exhibition is an investigation of humanity’s inherent disposition for mobility and its unfolding development in contemporary society. Particularly focusing on cities, mapping new urban ways of living, the works all explore the modern condition and the paradoxical isolation of today’s hyperconnected world. Between motion and immobility, extreme speed and slowness, connection and solitude, these works question how one navigates the urban, physical, digital and emotional landscapes of our time. Speaking of loneliness, erasure within the enormous mass of sprawling megacities and the boundless digital ocean, the exhibition thus questions the direction of humanity, responding to today’s new ways of communicating, connecting, perceiving, and being. Doug Aitken points to the challenges of living in the midst of today’s unequaled fast pace, of knowing the right direction to take within speedy technological advancement and changing urban landscapes.

AN INTERVIEW WITH JÉRÔME SANS ON NAKED CITY, by Naz Cuguoğlu

INTERVIEW JEROME AND DOUG video realized by Jasper Landmann and Rik Oppermann

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"Many of my works are attempting to create new blueprints for how we can communicate, narrative structures that feel like they might be a little bit more accurate to our human condition, the everyday experiences that we perceive." - Doug Aitken

Installation view Doug Aitken "Windows", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Windows", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Modern Figures", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Modern Figures", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Modern Figures", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Modern Figures", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Modern Figures", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Modern Figures", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Modern Figures", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Modern Figures", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Doug Aitken and Jérôme Sans, in front of "Modern Figures", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, 2024.

Installation view Doug Aitken "Digital Detox", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Flags and Debris", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Flags and Debris", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Flags and Debris", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Flags and Debris", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Doug Aitken "Don't Think Twice II", 2006, Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Doug Aitken "Ascending Staircase", 2024.
Permanent commissioned piece on the occasion of the exhibition Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Doug Aitken "Ascending Staircase", 2024.
Permanent commissioned piece on the occasion of the exhibition Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Doug Aitken and Jérôme Sans

Installation view Doug Aitken "Sleepwalkers", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Sleepwalkers", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Sleepwalkers", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Sleepwalkers", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Sleepwalkers", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Sleepwalkers", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Doug Aitken and Jérôme Sans

Installation view Doug Aitken "Windows", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Modern Figures", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Modern Figures", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Doug Aitken and Jérôme Sans, in front of "Modern Figures", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, 2024.

Installation view Doug Aitken "Digital Detox", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Installation view Doug Aitken "Flags and Debris", Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Doug Aitken "Don't Think Twice II", 2006, Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Doug Aitken "Ascending Staircase", 2024.
Permanent commissioned piece on the occasion of the exhibition Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe

Doug Aitken "Ascending Staircase", 2024.
Permanent commissioned piece on the occasion of the exhibition Naked City, Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2024.
Photographer: Hadiye Cangökçe