Ryan Gander, featured on the cover of this issue, speaks from the very heart of our time. According to him, looking at a work of art for a long time is not just an aesthetic experience but also a form of resistance. Because meaning is formed not in the rapidly flowing images, but in the eye that stops to look. And Gander says something surprising in the midst of all this chaos:
“The world has never been this good.”
When you read the entire interview, you realize 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 just a closing but also an opportunity to rethink. These years following the pandemic, wars, and crises have pushed us to get lost in speed. But art, on the contrary, wants us to stay in an exhibition hall, in front of a photograph, within a sentence.
The articles in this issue also address this conscious slowing down, awareness, perspective, and resistance from different angles: Dick van Zuijlen’s interview with the artificial intelligence character ZERO rethinks the boundaries between humans and machines in a poetic dialogue.
Entering its third decade, Autoban illustrates how contemporary art has become indispensable to our world. The transitions it creates between space and time remind us of the spirit of place amid life’s rapid pace.
The “Young or Old?” dossier questions how a new generation of artists weighs production against time, risk against maturity.
The “What Happened in 2025?” dossier documents a year spanning protests to losses, exhibitions to solidarity, capturing the year’s artistic panorama.
As we enter 2026, the ArtDog Istanbul team’s wish is simple but powerful: to continue looking, listening, and understanding. To not forget the seriousness of looking at a work of art for a long time, the value of taking time for a word, a sound, or an image. Because the most obvious truth that 2025 taught us was this: in a world where everything is quickly erased, the only thing that lasts is attention.
May 2026 bring us all that attention, that depth, that state of remaining human.
Through art, through patience, through persistence.