Dio Horia is pleased to participate in the 2022 edition of Taipei Dangdai with 'The Metamorphosis', a solo presentation of new works by Maja Djordjevic created especially for the occasion.
Maja Djordjevic is well known for her idiosyncratic intermingling of the meticulous technique and canonic elements of classical painting with a quasi-primitive digital rendering style and an ever-present sense of wry humor. In this project, Djordjevic investigates the phenomena of time and ephemerality through the use of the Renaissance tropes of memento mori and vanitas.
Where the artist’s earlier employment of the memento mori drew on the legacy of the Classical Renaissance and its visions of Humanism and the idealized perspectival visual mastery of the world, this series of paintings turns to the Baroque era. The Baroque, with its characteristic sensuous richness, grandeur, emotional exuberance, and focus on the notions of temporality has allowed Djordjevic to connect her ongoing engagement with internal states and life’s ephemerality with the timely yet timeless questioning of national, collective, and personal identity. Bringing the artist’s signature stick figure characters into play with Baroque’s key motives of ruins, roses, soap, candles, the hourglass, mirrors, gardens, and butterflies, these works create a space where the abiding concerns of the Renaissance era come to invade and crystallize the trappings and uneasy considerations of our own time and its daily lifestyle.
— Maja Djordjevic (b. 1990, Belgrade) has received her Bachelor and Master studies from the Faculty of Fine Arts (Painting) in Belgrade. Djordjevic has participated in various solo and international exhibitions and fairs. She is represented by Dio Horia Gallery Athens, and had shows at Carl Kostyál, London, UK; Library Street Collective, Detroit, MI, USA; The Garage Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Balkan Projects, Los Angeles, USA; and at institutions such as Galerija KM8; Goethe Istitute, Belgrade, Serbia; Museum of Conteporary Art Vojvodina, Serbia. Her work was also showed at the 57th October Art Salon, Belgrade, at Zona Maxo Mexico and had a solo show at the Hole Gallery in New York for which she received a feature at Juxtapoz magazine among others. She has received two awards for Painting, the former being the Ristai Beta Vukanović prize and the latter from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade.