Nazif Topçuoğlu
Consolation
12 December, 2009 – 21 January, 2010
Opening Reception:
12 December 2009, 7:30 pm onwards
Green Art Gallery Dubai
51st Street, Villa # 23, Jumeirah 1 P.O.Box 257 11 Dubai, UAE T: + 9714 3449 888 F: + 9714 3447 449 E: info [at] gagallery.com
http://www.gagallery.com
Green Art Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of “Consolation”, a solo show for Turkish photographer Nazif Topçuoğlu, marking the Istanbul-based artist’s first appearance in the Middle East.
The exhibition will encompass new works in addition to those developed in his earlier series including “Readers”, “Curiosity & Experience” and “New World”.
Topçuoğlu creates highly staged, theatrical works typically featuring young girls living in lavish period backdrops. They play symbolic roles and become almost akin to Old Master paintings with their glowing skin and richly coloured garments. In many aspects, photography is in dialogue with the history of painting, whilst also recalling the world of theatre.
The underlying thread in his work is a constant preoccupation with time, memory and loss. He worries about our tenuous grip on existence, how quickly life and our ideals can slip through our fingers. Through his constant references to art history along with the writings of authors like Marcel Proust, Vladimir Nabokav and Lewis Carrol, he attempts to preserve the past on his camera film. However, the contemporary world inhabits these staged pasts, with works suggesting both a past scene and a modern day event we can read about in the news. There is often a characteristic duality in his work; hovering between innocence and experience, passivity and aggression, masculinity and femininity
His work references and humours the evolution of Turkish Society, current affairs and media. For instance, “Suicide” shows how Turkish girls, in an attempt to be Western, have become consumers of fashion and what can happens when ideals are lost, a criticism against the girls in society on whom he has built his hopes upon.
In his “Readers” series, books and the library play an important role. The books function not only as symbols of knowledge but, more importantly, as tools for female self-empowerment.
Meanwhile, “Lamentations” (New World Series, 2006 – 2007), showing 11 girls sprawled across an oriental rug, was based on Abu Ghraib prison during the American invasion on Iraq where girls were shown piled up as did the Iraqi prisoners. This was the starting point but the work references various other ideas: Goya’s Disasters of War and Theodore Gericault’s painting “Raft of the Medusa”.
The exhibition will also showcase 4 new works including a large triptych measuring 4m width and 2m in height.
Notes to Editors
About Nazif Topçuoğlu
Born in 1954, Nazif Topçuoğlu graduated with a Masters degree from the Institute of Design in Chicago in 1981. Since then he has exhibited worldwide and has published 3 books on the history and criticism of photography. Nazif’s work was included in the Turkish pavillion during the 50th Venice biennale in 2003 and he has held several solo shows both in Istanbul and abroad. Most recently he participated in the Solo Project in Basel in 2009 and was included in the group show entitled ” A Subjective Panorama of Contemporary Turkish Photography” as part of the Turkish Cultural Season in Paris at the Maison de Metallos in November 2009. Nazif’s works are part of museums and in private and public art collections of which most notable are JPMorgan-Chase, USA, Marion and Guy Naggar, London, UK, Schürmann, Germany, Sema and Barbaros Çağa, Istanbul, Fotocollectie Hoboken Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands and the Reflex Miniature Museum of Contemporary Art, Amsterdam, Netherlands. His work is included in several significant publications on contemporary art including Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography, published by Phaidon in 2006 and User’s Manual: Contemporary Art in Turkey 1986-2006, published by art-ist in 2007. He will also be included in the upcoming publication entitled “Unleashed: Contemporary Art from Turkey” to be published by Transglobe Publishing in spring 2010.
About Green Art Gallery
Green Art Gallery was founded in 1995 and was amongst the first galleries to exhibit Arab art in Dubai. The Gallery became a primary establishment to nurture the city’s earliest art collector base by promoting pioneering artists from across the Middle East and North Africa. In 2009, leveraging its long and rich history in the market, Green Art Gallery also began to represent and showcase contemporary artists from the region. In this manner the Gallery would become one of the few spaces whose knowledge and expertise has spanned the Arab art movement from modernism and will continue to promote the newest tendencies in the regional contemporary art practices.
Green Art Gallery aims to become not only an exhibition space, but also as a supporter and point of reference for the regional trends in modern and contemporary art practices.
Opening Hours
Saturday-Thursday from 10 am until 9 pm. Closed on Fridays
Contact Info
51st Street, Villa # 23, Jumeirah 1
P.O.Box 257 11
Dubai, UAE
T: + 9714 3449 888
F: + 9714 3447 449
E: info [at] gagallery.com
W: http://www.gagallery.com
For high-res images, artist bios, press enquiries, artist interviews and any further information please contact info [at] gagallery.com
