The Napoleone Collection featuring Madame Blavatsky

collectorspace inaugurates its Istanbul location with the presentation of a single artwork from the Napoleone Collection, Goshka Macuga’s Madame Blavatsky (2007). Macuga’s sculpture-installation is a life-size figure of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a 19th-century Russian aristocrat and self-professed psychic/mystic, suspended between two chairs in a hypnotic trance. Despite being accused of fakery and plagiarism on multiple counts, Blavatsky remained to be an influential figure at her time as the founder of Theosophy, a spiritual philosophy based on mystical insight, and the author of voluminous books on the subject. She traveled extensively throughout the world, and her main contribution is now believed to be one of the first to bring concepts such as brotherly love, racial equality, and Karma from the East to the Western societies suffering from the brutality of the Victorian Imperialist Industrialist Age. Using Blavatsky’s figure, Macuga’s work evokes thoughts on spiritualism, secret powers, and illusion, while exploring the conventions of exhibition displays for historical figures and objects.

Also included in this presentation is a video portrait of the collector, Valeria Napoleone, who collects art exclusively by contemporary women artists. Her collection includes works by Ghada Amer, Tauba Auerbach, Shirin Neshat, Rivane Neuenschwander, Pae White, and Lisa Yuskavage, among many other established and emerging artists. In the video, Napoleone gives details of her collecting style and methods, and discusses her goals and motivations for the collection. The video also shows how the artworks in the collection are displayed at Napoleone’s home, and how they interact with each other, thereby offering a context for understanding and evaluating the collection.  Talks and publications will be used throughout the exhibition to further explore the relevance of this collection, to critically review the collecting practices, and to provide feedback to the collector.

Goshka Macuga (b. 1967, Warsaw) is an artist based in London. Macuga studied at Wojciech Gerson School of Art, Warsaw; Central Saint Martins School of Art, London; and Goldsmiths College, London. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2008. Macuga is represented by Kate MacGarry (London), Rüdiger Schöttle (Munich), and Andrew Kreps Gallery (New York).

The Napoleone Collection is the private collection of Italian-born, London-based couple Valeria and Gregorio Napoleone.  Valeria Napoleone is an art patron who actively supports young art institutions and emerging artists.

Installation shots from “collectorspace Presents The Napoleone Collection Featuring Madame Blavatsky”, collectorspace, Istanbul, 2011. Photographs by Sevim Sancaktar.