*NAZIF TOPCUOGLU* (TURQUÍA)

Nazif Topçuoğlu born in 1953 in Ankara, Turkey.


http://www.naziftopcuoglu.com/

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. His work appears regularly at art fairs such as Paris Photo (2006-2009), ARCO (2008 & 2009), Scope Basel (2008) among others and at auctions, most recently in the Christies Dubai sale in April 2009, the Sotheby’s Turkish Contemporary Art auction in March 2009 and Phillips De Pury’s Now: Art of the 21st Century in September 2009. 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.


Nazif Topçuoğlu works in the domain of constructed, staged photography, where everything is controlled. Rather than capture actual events, Nazif tends to create controlled events in which he allows small accidents to happen. Over the years, he has created a consistent body of work that predominantly features young girls set in period backdrops and engaged in a variety of symbolic actions and roles. Nazif’s photographs are almost akin to painting in their rich colour and detail, while also resembling stills from a theatre play. The underlying thread in his work is a constant preoccupation with time, memory and loss. He worries about the transience of people and ideals, and tries to reconstruct unclear and imperfect images of an idealized past. Hence his constant art-historical references to classical paintings and photographs such as Rembrandt and Caravaggio as well as to authors like Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov and Lewis Carrol, are an attempt to recapture the past. Despite the old-fashioned mise-en-scene, however, the subtexts in Nazif’s work remains remains purely contemporary. There is often a characteristic duality in his work; hovering between innocence and experience, passivity and aggression, masculinity and femininity.

@ Nazif: It is a pleasure for me to share his photographic work @