The Turkish art and cultural scene developed tremendously fast within the last years, particularly in Istanbul. In the 1980s young Turkish artists broke with the traditional art of their country, at first unnoticed by the Turkish public and the global art world. After years of isolation this generation of artists in the 1990s indicated their wish to speak also internationally and set decisive examples - politically engaged, aesthetically radical and with new artistic arguments. The Istanbul Biennale, founded in 1987, by this time experienced an increasing significance and has since then a high standing for the contemporary art, not only within Turkey. The Istanbul Biennale got a local and international network going, of which the development is still pushed ahead first by private individuals and private foundations. Several big concerns and banking houses have set up new exhibition spaces like Borusan, Platform Garanti or PROJE 4L, all of which are explicitly meant to be platforms for the discussion of new and avant-garde tendencies. Apart from the Istanbul Museum of Contemporary Art (founded in the mid 1990s) SantralIstanbul was recently opened, a museum of contemporary art connected to the Bilgi University, which is at the same time a center of culture and education and accommodates the first international artist-in-residence program in Turkey. In view of this development people even spoke about the "miracle of Istanbul" at the turn of the millennium: a phenomenon which - not least in the context of discussions about the expansion of the European Union - by that time caused an increasing attention for contemporary art from Turkey especially in Germany, as proofed by numerous exhibition projects.

The project space Tanas is meant to further follow the continuous developments of contemporary Turkish art and to present them in Berlin - in close cooperation with Turkish persons engaged in the cultural sector and independent from representative duties. Tanas is supposed to be a platform for the steady discussion and interaction of Turkish artists and curators with the German and international audience. Berlin represents the proper position for this purpose with regards to the local cultural landscape as well as the social and political implications. Not least Istanbul and Berlin are connected by a sister-city arrangement since 1988 within the context of which a fine tangle of relations in the field of art has been created, for example by grants and cooperations of cultural institutions.Tanas is managed by René Block who now continues his long-standig examination of contemporary art from Turkey. Already in 1994 he presented a survey of a, at that time, unknown scene with Iskele. Türkische Kunst (ifa-Galerie, Stuttgart).

With Orient/ation he set a new standard for the Istanbul Biennale in 1995 and 1998 the exhibition Iskorpit - Aktuelle Kunst aus Istanbul (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin) followed. At present René Block is furthermore entrusted with the edition of a series of monographs about Turkish artists at YKY publisher's in Istanbul.

Tanas is created in close cooperation with the Vehbi Koç Foundation in Istanbul. The Vehbi Koç Foundation supports educational, social and cultural projects and founded the first private museum in Turkey in 1980 (Sadberk Hanim Museum). TANAS is an anagram of Sanat, the Turkish word for art.