In Topçuoğlu’s recent photographs there is a sense of anxiety, an uncanny instability suggested by the asymmetrical gestures, which imply a state of indeterminate conflict. Anxious figures, like tightrope walkers, try to carry out a balancing act. The female characters are choreographed in ways reminiscent of those Baroque paintings where flowing lines intertwine within dynamic figural compositions.
Sometimes the sense of imbalance is sustained by a diagonal line connecting two seemingly opposite poles: the faux mobility of stuffed animals on the one hand and the stark dynamism of figural composition on the other. Obviously, these being photographs, pictures, all action can only be suggested, the living parrot and the dead birds are equally inert within the frame.
There has been a continuous narrative in Topçuoğlu’s allegorical works. The students we witnessed in the early ‘Readers’ series have now grown up and are facing the real world, and it does not totally conform to what they have learned in school, it is an alien and dangerous, frightening place.
This is the story of their attempts at dealing now with things mostly beyond their control.
Their futile attempts to find respite in knowledge and natural sciences having failed, they have to confront frustrating conflicts and the questions of identity head-on.
The seemingly non-conformist behavior of the characters reflect their frustration: they struggle, caress, cuddle, fight, touch, and support each other all in an attempt to keep their balance, to remain stable, to survive in the grown-ups’ world.
