ISTANBUL.- The 10th edition of Contemporary Istanbul closed on Sunday, 15 November 2015, surpassing expectation with the attendance of more than 86,000 foreign collectors and VIP’s, art professionals, academics, museum groups and art lovers from all over the world. The success of this year is revealed in the total value of the exhibited works amounting to 63 million euros, of which 64% were sold.

This year, Contemporary Istanbul built on its years of success as Turkey’s largest international contemporary art fair, bringing 102 galleries from 24 territories and 790 artists, welcoming 23 galleries that took part for the first time.

The highest priced work was Jannis Kounellis 'Untitled’ sculpture on sale for €1,040,000, presented by Galeri Artist. Lazarides Gallery's work by Banksy was on sale for £500,000 and Mehmet Güleryüz's artwork ‘Homage to Titian’s Marsyas’ was on sale for €175,000. Krampf Gallery showcased international artist Marc Quinn’s sculpture of Kate Moss worth $160,000.

Among the leading artist’s works to be sold during the fair were Tony Cragg’s sculpture ‘Mixed Feelings’, worth €130,000, Jannis Kounellis’ ‘Untitled’, worth €110,000 and Carole Feuerman’s hyperrealist sculpture ‘Balance Bust’, from C24 Gallery, worth $28,000. Aaran Art Gallery, showcased in this years CI Focus: Tehran, sold Mojtaba Amini’s monumental sculpture ‘Joint’ for €10,000 and Mark Hachem Gallery sold artist Stefano Bombardieri’s complete works. From this years CI Plugin section, Marck’s kinetic video sculpture was sold at €15,000 from Licht Feld Gallery and C24 Gallery sold all three works in Mike Dargas’ ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ series at $20,000 each.

On the last day of Contemporary Istanbul, Ali Güreli, the chairman and founder of CI, said: “Contemporary Istanbul hosted prominent galleries from all over the world in its 10th edition. We have received considerable interest from the audience, as in previous years. Through significant galleries and their selection of artworks, the fair welcomed 86,000 visitors and 64 % of the total artworks exhibited were sold.”

Fair highlights:

This year’s edition included exclusive highlights to celebrate Contemporary Istanbul’s landmark 10th anniversary.

Contemporary Istanbul hosted a new program called Solo Shows, where the five galleries curated presentations of one of their represented artists. This year was marked a success with Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporenea Gallery, selling American artist Zio Ziegler’s intricately patterned paintings for around €20,000 each.

Now in its third year, Plugin, the New Media Section, attracted a lot of interest, displaying sound and light installations, interactive and generative art projects, indoor mapping and holographic and video art works under the theme “X-CHANGE”. Artworks were connected by rethinking alternative ways of change; reusing, remixing and revaluing the wasted and developing the culture in science, art and technology. Highlights included artist Nihat Karataşlı’s interactive and video installation ‘Mneumonic’, Casey Reas' code and digital image-based 'Todays Ideology' represented by Dam Gallery and Mo H Zareei’s mechatronic sound sculpture series on show at The Lajervardi Foundation.

Open to all art lovers, this years Plugin Walks provided visitors with a free detailed tour of the section, and the the interview program Plugin Talks invited debate around topics including ‘Art of Game / Game of Art’, ‘Between Digital Art and Commerce’ and ‘To Make Science, Art and Technology’. Plugin Workshops welcomed children between the ages of 7-13 to discuss and explore issues of science, art, technology.

Contemporary Tehran was this years’ CI Focus, presenting a selection of works by emerging and established artists. Artworks by artists such as Ali Akbar Sadeghi (Shirin Gallery); Morehshin Allahyari (Lajevardi Foundation); Nasser Bakhshi (Aaran Art Gallery); Houman Mortazavi (Dastan’s Basement) and Babak Roshaninejad (Assar Art Gallery) gave an introduction to visitors and collectors of Tehran’s growing contemporary art scene. Also a part of this year’s Focus program, 12 works from The Mobarqa Collection, owned by Nadeer Mobarqa and his wife, were on display. This exceptional collection of over 600 works of Iranian modern and contemporary art includes drawings, installations, paintings, photographs, prints, sculpture and video art.

Aiming to support new collectors, in its second year, CI Editions continued to offer a limited number of special editions. Presenting works by Hale Tenger, Buğra Erol, Orhan Cem Çetin, Ardan Özmenoglu, Ahmet Polat, Sıtkı Kösemen, Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu, Mustafa Horasan, amongst others, CI Editions was one of the areas that brought the most interest from the visitors and new collectors.

CI Dialogues captured the scope of the Conference program, where the international contemporary art leaders met. Those in discussion included: ‘Bloomberg HT Session: Being a Collector and Art Economy, Today and Tomorrow', 'Marc Olivier Wahler speaks with Lang & Baumann', ' There Never Was, There Always Has Been' conferences and “Spark” | Snapshots from Istanbul’s Art Scene documentary screening.

The British Museum participated in the panel called Iranian Art NOW with Islamic Art Curator Venetia Porter and Sotheby's Executive Vice President of the Middle East and the region of major oil corporations Roxane Zand, as well as Shirin Art Gallery owner, Shirin Partovi, who spoke on the current environment of contemporary art in Tehran.