Berat Işık

Kusursuz Aşıklar, 2016, wall clock, knife motor, 75 x 40 x 25 cm

The installation titled Perfect Lovers, which refers to Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) produced between 1987 and 1990, is an electronic arrangement consisting of two clock faces, two stepper motors, and an Arduino set. In his work composed of two clocks placed side by side as symbols of himself and his dying partner, Gonzalez-Torres conveys the tension of two people living together while one of them approaches an inevitable end. Moving in perfect synchronization down to the second, as if counting down in a rhythm toward a storm about to break, the blade and its handle perform their task so coldly and mechanically that we look at the clock in silence and place our hands behind our backs—but to no avail: the knife has already been plunged into our backs and has begun to turn inside us.