07 Feb 2013

Zorzini Gallery presents Taxidermy Lesson solo show by Teodora Axente

Teodora Axente is an emerging Romanian artist descending from the Cluj School of Art, working and living in Cluj Napoca city. Her practice of painting includes classical support of oil on canvas, while her subject and manner addresses existential contemporary issues and social inquires regarding nowadays humanity.

Teodora Axente is one of the most promising young Romanian artists, as her painting combine excellent technique skills with a profound sense of observation with regard to the new social and personal order and to the context we are all witnessing and taking part of. This explanatory process about craving for attention, acceptance and desire is taking place against the most common household backgrounds, as to underline the fact that these new social and private rituals similar to the rules of taxidermy have now become our generally accepted normality.

The latest works of Teodora Axente comprised in the Taxidermy Lesson solo show unveil and display what lays behind one's search and need of social and domestic self and otherness approval; ritual alienation appears wrapped in animal furs and feathers, from behind a set up in which the characters lie isolated and quiet, waiting for their self accomplishment in a state of stillness and in the deepest silence. Thus, Teodora Axente both states and depicts the terrible switch in the condition of the contemporary man from a social animal into a lonely being, clogged up into a stuffed and stiffened pose, converted into a trophy of the self. (Adina Zorzini)

Teodora Axente (b. 1984) is the awarded winner of ESSL Art Prize, 2011 edition; in 2012 the artist presented a solo show at Ana Cristea Gallery in New York, while the present solo exhibition is the first presentation of Teodora Axente in Bucharest.