Green Art Gallery in Dubai to open Nazif Topcuoglu Solo Exhibition

Written by Paul Patterson Saturday, 04 December 2010 22:16

DUBAI.- Green Art Gallery announces the opening of “Consolation”, a solo show for Turkish photographer Nazif Topçuoğlu, marking the Istanbul-based artist’s first appearance in the Middle East, in an effort to bring Turkey's exciting contemporary art to the region. The exhibition will encompass new works in addition to those developed in his earlier series including “Readers”, “Curiosity & Experience” and “New World”. On exhibition 12 December through 21 January, 2010.

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.

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. His work was also shown at ARCO in 2008 & 2009, Scope Basel in 2008 and Paris Photo in 2007-2009 and appears regularly 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.

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.

Green Art Gallery was founded in 1995 and was amongst the first galleries to exhibit Arab art in Dubai. The Gallery played a vital role in introducing modern Arab art to the city and beyond and in nurturing the establishment of the city’s earliest collector base. Promoting the works of the region’s generation of pioneering modern artists from across the Middle East and North Africa including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, UAE, and Morocco, Green Art was also active in launching the careers of emerging artists during that period. Artists represented during that period include Syrian pioneers Fateh Moudarres and Louay Kayyali, Iraqi artists Ismail Fattah and Dia Azzawi and Moroccan artist Hakim Ghazali. Many of these artists have now reached unprecedented recognition both regionally and internationally.

Leveraging its long and rich history in the market, Green Art Gallery will also begin 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, with relevant and dynamic programming. 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. Visit : http://www.gagallery.com/

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