SMALL DARK LIGHT: Burcu Yağcıoğlu

What seeks to shrink

must first have grown;

what seeks weakness surely was strong.

What seeks its ruin

must first have risen;

what seeks to take

has surely given. *

Galerist is pleased to present Burcu Yağcıoğlu's third solo exhibition at the gallery titled Small Dark Light between November 15 and December 21, 2024. The exhibition brings together various media and techniques such as collage, drawing, porcelain, and site-specific installations, through which the artist focuses on the genealogy of inertia and stillness.

Taking its title from a passage from Ursula Le Guin’s translation of Tao Te Ching, the exhibition approaches stillness, lethargy, and inertia as radical modes of existence in a world where the unyielding urge for progress is driving the planet towards collapse. In contrast to the progressive, growth-oriented visions of the future that dominate today’s world, the exhibition proposes the act of stopping, of doing not doing. Drawing from psychoanalysis, physics, biology, science fiction, and mythology, Yağcıoğlu reimagines the thought systems that centre around production and growth.

The science of motion and stillness, thermodynamics, forms the conceptual foundation of the exhibition. While the first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed; the second law, the law of inertia, shows us that energy will inevitably be lost irreversibly. According to this principle, all systems will eventually come to a standstill: energy depletes, organisms age, stars die, machines wear out, and all movement ultimately ceases.

From bacteria to whales, giant water lilies to hurricanes, stock markets to rivers, and nation-states alike, they all do the same thing: through their movements, processes, and actions, they consume the gradient, the difference around them, until they eventually stop. Heat, pressure, and chemical differences – the driving forces behind all motion in the universe – are continuously levelled out by nature. Once these differences are dissipated, motion ceases, and everything settles into a tranquil equilibrium, the peaceful stillness of inertia. Paradoxically, within the chaos and entropy of the universe described by thermodynamics, the more we stop, the longer we might endure.

Human nature harbours a similar contradiction: we experience a constant tension between the desire for relentless progress and the longing for the serenity that comes with stillness. While we search for infinite energy and movement, we also yearn for the quietude of stopping. Yağcıoğlu’s works delicately explore the tension between our appetite for change and motion, and the innate pull we feel towards stillness. Yağcıoğlu presents inertia not merely as a pause, but as a conscious mode of existence.

Small Dark Light is accompanied by a catalogue written by Ulya Soley. On view until December 21, the exhibition can be visited from 11:00 to 19:00, except from Sundays.

Special thanks | Emel Erdem, SAHA and Zeyoseramik.

* Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 36, Translated by Ursula Le Guin.