Nazif Topçuoglu 'Lamentations' 2007, photography

UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS.- Flatland Gallery presents Nazif Topçuoglu – Lamentations, on view through April 12, 2008. The world of Turkish photographer Nazif Topçuoglu is a prohibited place where well-groomed high school girls in miniskirts perform adult fantasies with unusual props such as books, compass and microscopes.

Sheltered in the cushioned backrooms, boudoirs and libraries of nineteenth century-like mansions, they inspect one another, punish each other or just enjoy a moment of intimacy. Cast as domineering or submissive, sadist or masochistic, they however cannot pain each other -for, we get the intuition that they soon will swap roles.

In Topçuoglu's world, Foucault's power-knowledge nexus has turned into harmless games. Whether his women of doubtful youth conquer or surrender, enact rituals of initiations into forbidden pleasures, they do so for our eyes, only.

Sometimes referencing famous compositions by Great Masters of the history of art -preferably baroque paintings by, for instance, Caravaggio- Topçuoglu does not only elevate these seemingly soft-erotic depictions to the status of key moments in the existence of women, but elaborates a discourse on the stereotypes of femaleness in canonical representations in the Occidental and Middle Easter arts and literature.

Alluring at first sight and interesting in the long term, these works have both the power to bewitch and criticize. Welcome to a delightful theatre, that of innocence -lost and recovered. Catherine Somzé, Amsterdam 20.