Consolation, solo exhibition for Nazif Topcuoglu

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.