Turkey and Germany Meet in Anna Laudel’s “Concordia Rhapsody”
At Anna Laudel in Istanbul, “Concordia Rhapsody” turns a residency program into an exhibition about exchange, movement, and artistic form. The group show brings together Ardan Özmenoğlu, Beate Passow, Cem Sonel, Thomas Werner, and musician Sinem Altan, all of whom participated in the International Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia Artist Residency Program in Bamberg, Germany, during 2025–26.
The exhibition’s structure is built around a productive tension between national backgrounds and artistic methods. Özmenoğlu and Sonel are from Turkey, while Passow and Werner are from Germany. Altan, who was born in Turkey and relocated to Germany as a child, adds a particularly resonant bridge between the two countries through music and performance, giving the show a time-based, immersive dimension.
That sense of cross-border dialogue is also visible in the works themselves. Passow’s black-and-white textile pieces, punctuated by occasional bright color, address social structures, political conditions, and systems of power. Werner, working in painting, presents large-scale abstractions that press against the boundary between painting and sculpture, challenging the idea of painting as a strictly flat medium.
Rather than treating medium as a fixed category, the exhibition uses it as a point of inquiry. Anna Laudel notes that the show’s multilayered structure creates an interdisciplinary experience, emphasizing the fluidity between different forms of artistic expression. In that framework, the artists’ individual practices become part of a larger conversation about how ideas travel, change, and accumulate meaning across contexts.
“Concordia Rhapsody” remains on view in Istanbul through June 28, 2026. After its presentation there, the exhibition will travel to Anna Laudel Ankara and Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, extending the same dialogue into new settings.
