iSALT BeyoğluBeyoğlu
Paintings, prints, jewellery, film and archive material tracing artist and educator Özer Kabaş (1934-1998) and his place in Turkey's cultural history.
Fishermen, sailors and dockworkers fill the paintings, and the sea doesn't sit behind them: it wraps around the figures, with images stacked on top of each other instead of receding into perspective. Kabaş took a mechanical engineering degree at Robert College before going to Yale to paint under Josef Albers, the order every Turkish parent hopes for followed by the one they dread.
You climb to the second and third floors, where the curators have grouped early 1960s paintings under "Social Satire", the harbour pictures under "Labour", and given the work made on Marmara Island its own space. Around them sit prints, jewellery from the Urart studio he co-founded, his 1967 short film İstanbul Hatırası, archive documents, and works by Mehmet Güleryüz, Fatma Tülin and Sedat Pakay.
Curator Tuğçe Kaplan calls Kabaş a figure art history overshadowed, so this suits anyone curious about Turkish modern art or how the Academy taught design. Entry is free, Tuesday to Sunday, until 14 March; Salt's exhibition tours are in Turkish.
The Labour paintings
Look for the fishermen and dockworkers of Istanbul, the Bosphorus and the Black Sea coast, with the sea wrapped around the figures like a living thing.
The Marmara Island paintings
Sea pictures Kabaş developed on Marmara Island, where mythological creatures sometimes turn up among the waves and sky.