Installation, 2022. Sculpture series of eight with broken and fixed wooden sticks, microphone stands, 1200x8000cm
“Lined up diagonally are Baha Görkem Yalım's Inclinations, a series of wooden sticks held by microphone stands, like fingers suspended in air failing to point out. Standing up with their disturbed straightness, these are other forms of a test—tests of force against containment and control. As a gesture of disturbing the linearity or in search of smoothing lines into circles, Görkem breaks each prefabricated straight wooden stick. Upon their breakage, they treat the sticks carefully to recover them from their trauma and make them whole, yet never complete, again. Some parts disappear inside the healed wound or spread around, not to be found again. Yet, the sticks become slightly longer than their original length. Critiquing the uprightness, progress, and verticality, the lines get perverted, become inclinations, and then slippery slopes. As a recurring concern and material element in their practice, Görkem integrates the support structures into the assemblage of the work again, this time by using microphone stands to present their gestures in form and to question the pressure applied by such structures of support. The microphone stands support the broken lines, amplifying the silence of the wooden sticks and the critique of modernist linearity, but also keep applying pressure while holding, creating tension in anticipation of another break. Disturbed and hurt, then taken care of and healed, almost stilled lines are still beholding the hope of inclining more and more to finally gain elasticity, overcome the risk of being broken again, and bend over to form a circle, losing stiffness.”
Alper Turan for the occasion of the exhibition smoothing (squares into circles) as curator
