THE DEAFENING SILENCE
Each artist has a path he/she follows during his/her art production continuum. The 25 year long art production continuum of Selahattin Yildirim shows us that he has a lot to say. He questions all sorts of social and humanistic values, conveying thoughts and even emotions to plastic dimensions. He has us confronting our own hearts, making us think. Mostly, he reflects our dark and evil faces. It’s as if he wishes to say; “If you can look” and “if you can stand it,” then, “you can do it too.”
Undoubtedly, the human body is the main material utilized in his works up to now. On one hand, he places stones on top of one another while on the other hand; he completes the Hadj of Humanity in Kaaba, stoning the devil.  The destiny of the woman, whose hands have been dyed with henna and tied and the destiny of the naked woman squatting down are one and the same actually. It is as if the woman, sometimes by washing and sometimes by being abandoned in the emptiness (on an empty surface), is groveling to her submission.
One of the most fundamental needs of human beings is shelter. At one time in his life, Selahattin Yildirim stretches tents over his canvases. His painting artistry is always of a caliber that is able to support the feeling conveyed. Thereby, our tents, this time shelter peace rather than pain. At another time, “water” also becomes a deep rooted element of his brush. It is as if the water that spouts from interlacing pipes is going to haul out, tearing the tents apart.  It is as if the water is engaged in an act of discharge rather than an act of purification. The texture, which is in the form of dirty waste, announces once again that each era shall have a different pictorial language.
“Death=Death” means only one thing: “Suicide.” Probably, that's what was on his mind while portraying the artists who had decided not to exist. On the other hand, he was conveying mixed thoughts in the aphorisms. Of course, as in all aphorisms… sometimes the magnolias flowered in the spring…
We can see him utilizing frequently recurring metaphors in his paintings; chair, ring (wedding ring), bandage, dog, cat food, dining table, stairs. However, the images he’s been using in his last few exhibitions seem to communicate themselves as loudly as they can; Straightjacket;  faces with their mouths, lips and eyes stitched; a huge penis, a huge vagina and a huge brain connecting them together.
Still, when we think of Selahattin Yildirim, “Faces" are what instantly come to our minds. Faces that do not belong to anybody but rather to everybody… Expressions that we hide but can not hide from… That irrepressible pain sneaking under our skins... Each of them are right in front of us, leaving us alone with the feeling inside us. Looking at the paintings from different artistic eras of Selahattin Yildirim is like running through one’s childhood photographs. While the photographs take us on a journey among our memories, his paintings lead us to thinking deep thoughts. As a result, some of us get lost among those thoughts that we haven’t been able to gather together within us for many years.
In the love making scenes that can be found in the series of paintings titled “Party”, the woman is once again in a state of submission. A dog or cat witnesses these pornographic scenes which do not contain sentimental depictions such as hugging or embracement. Here, the sexual act taking place with an animalistic instinct, completes the narrative of violence in the fairy tale with the animal as its witness. Violence always has a guard. Finally, everyone gets his/her share. After all, how possible is it to try not to touch upon pain?
When we look at the exhibition titled (H) IÇ YER (NON-SPACE / INNER SPACE), the woman’s act of submitting herself in front of the audience without hiding her body is inevitable in order for the woman to carry out her act of discharging. Thinking that the methods of enduring pain are true internal achievements, the woman with blood leaking between her legs, is now freer to some extent with the act of discharge she has experienced.
In his new exhibition, Selahattin Yildirim strongly emphasizes the feeling of emptiness he’s been using in his previous paintings as well as engaging himself in an act of complicated and psychological confrontation between the feeling of nothingness of that which comes from within. What he's trying to communicate to use is that, actually, that which is in nothingness can only become something and come into existence with the meaning we attribute to it. At other times, what he’s trying to communicate is that what we internalize is in the end a feeling of nothingness. The emptiness that normalizes the meaning is actually everything.
In his exhibition titled NON-SPACE / INNER SPACE, Selahattin Yildirim seems to portray the present with the abstractions he makes by leaving the human figure outside the canvas at times… Just as he feels like it…
His abstract works show us that, this time, he tries to keep silent while talking about the NON SPACE / INNER SPACE.  After all, don’t we need to silence ourselves so that we can hear our internal voice speak? However as is said in a dialogue in the movie Anna And The King: “When someone who has much to say says nothing, his/her silence can be deafening.”
Didem Elif  
idecember 2010