31/12/2025
Groundless Istanbul, a solo exhibition by Murat Germen, faculty member at Sabancı University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, opened at Collect Gallery on December 19 and will remain on view until February 2026.
In this exhibition, Germen applies the vertical perspective—the dominant visual language of our time—to the metropolis of Istanbul, in contrast to the linear perspective based on a fixed ground and horizon that underpinned Western modernity. Produced through technologies such as satellite imagery and drone photography, this viewpoint introduces multiple horizon points and the notion of “groundlessness,” re-mapping Istanbul as both a historical center and a constantly expanding, continuously monitored territory.
The works are organized under four main themes, addressing issues of scale and hegemony, topography, surveillance, and mass and infinity. High-altitude aerial perspectives confront viewers with the city’s physical limits and geographic magnitude, revealing Istanbul’s chaotic expansion and dismantling the illusion of a city that can be fully grasped or measured. Drone photographs foreground infrastructural density and spatial concentration, visualizing how the vertical gaze stratifies space—and society itself—into layers, while rejecting the idea of a stable, static ground.
Engaging with the concept of the “Eye of God,” Germen focuses on large public spaces and the intense flows of traffic and everyday life surrounding historical buildings, exposing the hierarchical structure imposed by a top-down gaze. In the final section, visual manipulations and mathematical transformations give rise to “small planets,” questioning the nature of the new visual order produced by vertical perspective and dissolving binaries such as subject–object and time–space.
Beyond presenting the beauty of the city, Groundless Istanbul offers a visual investigation into perspective, surveillance, militarism, and the proliferation of megacities within the context of contemporary art and cultural history. Through the technical possibilities of drones and aircraft, the exhibition reveals Istanbul as a self-enfolding, controlled, and endlessly expanding urban planet.
