Berke Yazıcıoğlu: Helix

Dirimart is pleased to announce Helix, Berke Yazıcıoğlu’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. Unfolding across the walls of the exhibition space, the animations of the artist occupy the central position within the exhibition, interweaving a range of concepts, from natural cycles and planetary movements to digital surveillance systems and the boundaries of privacy. Positioning the viewer as both observer and observed, the installation interrogates – through a striking visual language – the state of uninterrupted control generated by contemporary technologies. Helix redefines the experience of modern humanity under the governance of time and technology through the combined force of music and drawing.

Berke Yazıcıoğlu’s practice unfolds as a multi-layered structure woven across disciplines such as painting, drawing, textile and animation, grounded in the communicative force of drawing. Merging his background in visual communication design with the conceptual depth of fine art, the artist closely examines the image’s capacity to transmit ideology and to reinforce or unsettle social structures. While his earlier works explored the tension between desire and social order through erotics and social norms, his recent productions reconstruct classical music scores as visual narratives through analytical readings. Through multifigured compositions and sequential structures, Yazıcıoğlu addresses power dynamics in a visual language that parallels traditional narrative forms such as folk tales and fables, inviting viewers to explore the enduring conflict between personal longing and civic regulation.

Helix is a multimedia installation that considers circular motion as a shared structure of both natural and man-made systems, examining the relationship between surveillance and time. Taking Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, specifically the ‘Lever du Jour’ (Daybreak) theme, as its analytical point of departure, Yazıcıoğlu maps the melody onto the Z-axis of a trigonometric plane, constructing a mechanical spine and rotating clock that recall the circadian rhythm. The sketches, diagrams and circular musical staff displayed at the centre of the space document the analytical process behind cyclical patterns – such as the sine wave (the phase relationship between sin x and cos x) – that appear across phenomena ranging from harmonic sequences to planetary orbits. The music functions as a continuous motor for the space, determining its rhythm through a circular, helical movement. Blue tones and darkness dominate the works, reinforcing associations of mystery, abstraction and distance.

The animations and paintings on the surrounding walls address themes of privacy and control, placing the viewer within the intimate void between voyeur and observed. Through hand-drawn scenes featuring CCTV imagery and figures bearing binoculars, the audience is able to observe both the surveilled subjects and those performing the act of watching from an external vantage point. The all-seeing eyes produced by technologies such as big data and social media are presented as a collective practice of self-spying, leading to homogenisation within human experience. The parallel arrangement of opposing walls compels the viewer into a linear movement, transforming the space itself into a physical extension of the uninterrupted flow of the animations and the cyclical logic of technological surveillance.

Bringing together Berke Yazıcıoğlu’s recent analytically and visually driven investigations into musical structures, technological cycles of control and the mathematics of circular motion, Helix will be on view at Dirimart Pera from 12 March to 26 April 2026.