Alexandra Mocanu | Tapestries
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Overview
Twenty First Gallery is pleased to present Tapestries, an exclusive exhibition of artist Alexandra Mocanu. The show explores Mocanu’s poetic talent for creating vibrant, abstract tapestries of painterly expressions and exposes the artist as a master of sensation and technique.
Born in Bucharest, Alexandra Mocanu grew up immersed in the world of handcrafted arts, her mother is a textile artist and her father designs furniture. In the midst of the scents, sounds, art tools and materials surrounding her, Mocanu began to explore her own compositions and perceptions, first through photography and then through painting and tapestry. Inspired by the spontaneity of repeated gestures, her abstract paintings are created in gouache at first and then meticulously decomposed upon a loom. Her contemporary work illustrates an instinctive, thoughtful process, which allows the illusion of the passing of time to appear part of her work.
“What I admire in Alexandra’s work,” says Renaud Vuaillat, “is the intricate duality between the spontaneity of the brushstrokes and the patience, technical skills and thoroughness embedded in her tapestries. Tapestry N31 is a standout example of her artistic ability to create breathtaking transparency.”
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ARTWORKS
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Featured Artist
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Alexandra Mocanu
Raised by a textile artist mother and furniture designer father, Bucharest-born French Romanian artist Alexandra Mocanu grew up immersed in the world of handcrafted arts. Surrounded by the tools and materials of her parents’ workshop, Mocanu began to discover her own artistic perspective, first through photography, then painting and tapestry. She arrived at her chosen materials by instinct, exploring the contrasts between the immediacy of painterly gesture and the constraints of realism. She currently works out of her studio in Pantin, France. Imprinted with the rhythms of spontaneous gestures, Mocanu’s potent wall tapestry works are made of wool woven on canvas, with lines and colors meticulously threaded so as to appear at first glance to be painted in a single bold stroke. Her pieces begin as paintings in gouache, which are then painstakingly spun upon a loom into a tapestry. The expressive quality of Mocanu’s work belies her considered approach, in which a decisive brushstroke is slowed down into a time bending illusion woven with countless threads. At times spontaneous, other times more intentional, Mocanu’s abstract compositions assert a gap in the verisimilitude of mark making. Mocanu was given the contemporary design award for her work shown at PAD Paris in 2018, which was called “colorful, luminous, and original” by PAD Paris Jury President Marie-Laure Jousset, speaking to Le Quotidien de l’Art. “Tapisseries,” Mocanu’s debut New York exhibition at Twenty First Gallery, received coverage from Architectural Digest, Surface, AN Interior, Brown Harris Stevens, and Cover.
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