Turkey's Odunpazari Modern Museum invites creatives to explore link between nature and humans for anniversary

Creatures of Comfort brings together 25 international artists and designers

A stained-glass table by Misha Kahn resembles clusters of microorganisms or replicating cells. Photo: Odunpazari Modern Museum

In the quaint town of Odunpazari in Turkey’s Eskisehir region, the Odunpazari Modern Museum has spent the last five years bridging the gap between rural culture and cutting-edge art by well-known artists.

The striking museum, designed by Kengo Kuma and Associates, has become a landmark, crafted from timber inspired by the area’s history as a wood market, as well as the charming traditional Ottoman wooden houses in the town.

To celebrate its fifth anniversary this year, OMM, as the museum is also referred to, is presenting Creatures of Comfort, a large-scale exhibition that brings together 25 international artists and designers. Their works explore the relationship between form and function, blending natural elements and human-centric design to bridge the gap between urban life and nature.

“Beyond being a museum, OMM was envisioned as a space for connection, dialogue and discovery,” director Defne Casaretto tells The National. “The exhibition reflects OMM’s mission to foster new ways of seeing and being in the world: thoughtful, playful and rooted in curiosity.”

Turkey's Odunpazari Modern Museum opened in 2019. Photo: Kengo Kuma and Associates

Running until July 20, the show curated by Idil Tabanca offers a host of contemporary artworks and fantastical designs, which often blur the boundaries of painting, sculpture, installation and furniture design. The featured works imagine new ways of reintroducing nature into our daily environments, creating space for organic forms and textures to co-exist with the domestic and urban realm.

The show unfolds through three interconnected sections: Formations, Bloomcore and Creatures. These categories are united by a central theme, the process of Earth’s formation and the emergence of life.

“Formations represents the geological evolution of the planet,” Casaretto explains. “Artists working with materials such as stone, rock, sand, salt and lava explore the sculptural forces of nature, such as wind, rain, heat and time, positioning nature itself as the original sculptor.

Bloomcore marks the second phase of nature’s progression: the development of plants and ecosystems.

A 3D-printed table by Misha Kahn. Photo: Odunpazari Modern Museum

“In this section, artists draw inspiration from the natural world’s rich colour palette, engaging with pigments, patterns and organic forms,” she adds. “Creatures focuses on the appearance of living beings. The works in this section take cues from the forms of humans, animals and microorganisms, reflecting the dynamic and ever-moving essence of nature.”

The New Zealand-born, Paris-based design duo Batten and Kamp (Alexandra Batten and Daniel Kamp) are showing three pieces in the Formations section, all made from natural stone and steel.

Their Steel and Stone chair is as simple as the name suggests – a minimalist steel sheet shaped into a seat supported by a boulder. Odd Balance, is a sculpture vase with a small metal receptacle “growing” from a small rock.

The Steel and Stone chair Dining by Batten and Kamp involved the artists working with metal benders in Hong Kong. Photo: Odunpazari Modern Museum

“The works are from our Shelter to Ground series, which we launched in 2020 and has been evolving ever since,” Kamp tells The National.

“The series began as a rejection of working digitally and feeling stuck at our desks. We wanted to find our way back to the physicality of design, and part of why we love these works is that they are difficult to make.

“They required us to spend hours upon hours searching for the stones and go to the streets of Mong Kok in Hong Kong to work with metal benders. Our influences are always evolving, but it seems we always come back to deep history, to the unique nature of Aotearoa New Zealand, to the formation of continents and the universe at large, and always science fiction,” Kamp adds. “We zoom right out and look at life in the macro; very rarely do the works comment on our world as it is now.”

Over in Bloomcore, several works by American designer Misha Kahn offer a different aesthetic, full of large organic shapes in bright, contrasting colours. The pieces, ranging from furniture and carpets to spatial artwork installations, are abstract, bold and playful.

American artist Misha Kahn describes his approach to design as free-spirited. Photo: Didem Kendik

Latent Longing, a side table and artistic piece, is made of many amorphic stained-glass pieces in purple and pink with metal frames, reminiscent of clusters of microorganisms or replicating cells, combining traditional craftsmanship with a contemporary edge.

“A free-spirited approach to improvising with new production methods while roping in traditional craft media often lends a new texture or language to an otherwise familiar process,” Kahn says. “For instance, the console in aluminium and glass uses the sand-cast metal as frames to cast the hot glass in, so the glass takes on a kind of harassed taffy texture and the sand texture on the aluminium is a sharp contrast.

“The visual language overall borrows from so many things and I try to keep it quite loose and unexpected,” he adds. “The large printed table in the show pulls a bit from art nouveau mouldings and the Toys 'R' Us Super Soaker section, with bits of seed pods and other natural elements. I think it's in this mix that I can find some new magic.”

Though the museum is off the beaten path for most visitors to Turkey, an excursion to OMM and the town it calls home is well worth the trek.

Creatures of Comfort is running at the Odunpazari Modern Museum in Turkey until July 20