November – December 2025 “The World Has Never Been This Good”

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
At the End of a Year

As we approach the end of 2025, the world, art, and humanity still revolve around the same question: Amidst all the noise, speed, and information, what can we truly pay attention to?

Ryan Gander, featured on the cover of this issue, speaks from the very heart of this age. According to him, gazing at a work of art for a long time is not only an aesthetic experience but also a form of resistance. Because meaning is formed not in the rapidly flowing images, but in the eye that pauses to observe. And amidst all this chaos, Gander says something surprising:

“The world has never been so good.”

When you read the entire interview, you understand that this is an ironic statement, almost a warning. Because this sentence also carries an awareness of the approaching end, of exhaustion, of the world changing before our eyes.

The end of 2025 is not only a closing, but also an opportunity for rethinking. These years, following the pandemic, wars, and crises, have pushed us to get lost in the speed. But art, on the contrary, demands that we remain in an exhibition hall, in front of a photograph, within a sentence.

The articles in this issue address this conscious slowing down, awareness, gaze, and resistance from different perspectives: Dick van Zuijlen's interview with the AI character ZERO rethinks the boundaries between human and machine in a poetic dialogue.

Autoban, entering its third decade, explains how contemporary art is indispensable to the worlds it constructs. The transitions it creates between space and time remind us of the spirit of place against the speed of life.

The "Young or Late?" dossier questions how the new generation of artists weigh production against time, risk against maturity.

The "What Happened in 2025?" dossier records the art panorama of a year ranging from protests to losses, from exhibitions to solidarity.

As we enter 2026, the ArtDog Istanbul team's wish is simple but powerful: To continue to look, listen, and understand. Not forgetting the seriousness of gazing at a work of art for an extended period, the value of dedicating time to a word, a sound, an image. Because this was the clearest truth 2025 taught us: In a world where everything is rapidly erased, only attention remains.

May 2026 bring us all that attention, that depth, that state of remaining human.

With art, with patience, with persistence.

Şebnem Kırmacı – Editor-in-Chief, ArtDog Istanbul

Cover: “The story teller: The sense that you are a part of a flow of a thing,” 2025. An animatronic field mouse partially visible through a crack in the gallery wall, 2024. Animatronic mouse, sound, Dimensions variable ©️ Ryan Gander; Courtesy of the artist and Camden Arts Projects, London. Photograph: Deniz Güzel

Cover Design: Burcu Ocak

PUBLICATION INFORMATION

ARTDOG ISTANBUL Art Investments Inc. On behalf of
Boğaçhan Buğra Kaya & Şebnem Kırmacı

GENERAL EDITOR
Şebnem Kırmacı

PUBLICATION CONSULTANT
Tahir Özyurtseven

MANAGER OF EDITORIAL SERVICE
Sibel Oral

EDITORS
Semra Dursun, Şeyma Elaman Üstün, Sine Ergün, Idil Sancar, Hatice Utkan Özden

ADVERTISING
İpek Peker ipek@artdogistanbul.com

MARKETING AND COMMUNICATION

Ayşe Nur Ayan aysenur@artdogistanbul.com

DIGITAL DESIGN
Büşra Kaplan, Burcu Ocak

CONTRIBUTORS
Hale Albayrak, Evrim Altuğ, Murat Cem Baytok, Büşra Erkara, Bert Van Horck, Onur Kaya, Beral Madra, Timuçin Oral, Aylin Çaylak Yegül, Cem Yegül, Didem Yeşilova, Didem Çaylak van Zuijlen, Dick van Zuijlen, Aylin Seçkin

ACCOUNTING
finance@artdogistanbul.com

Management Address
ArtDog Istanbul Art Investments Inc., Evliya Çelebi Mah., Sadi Konuralp Cad., No: 5/2, Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, 34433, Beyoğlu / Istanbul T: +90 212 945 94 82

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Publication Type: Bimonthly, periodical. All rights to the articles and photographs in ArtDog Istanbul belong to the authors or ArtDog Istanbul. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.

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