Exhibition Inspired by Anne Sexton’s The Frog Prince Opens

Elizabeth Xi Bauer has opened The moon between my teeth, an exhibition in London of new works by Gokula Stoffel in conversation with Alexandra Zarins’ most recent series of paintings, inspired by Anne Sexton’s poem The Frog Prince.

Both Alexandra Zarins and Gokula Stoffel work extensively with figuration across various mediums. Rather than implying the human figure to create idyllic narratives, both artists share a taste for the mysterious, evident in their use of a darker palette and in the way they portray their subjects. Angular bones, mischievous eyes, fleshy limbs are all recurring motifs in both Stoffel and Zarins’ paintings. Their subjects appear to be caught between two worlds: this one and one of wild delights.


Sexton’s poem was first published in 1971 in Transformations, her poem-story retellings of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Sexton uses the familiar children’s stories which are embedded in our collective sense of growing up in order to re-tell her own life experiences. In The Frog Prince, the speaker of the poem says: "I took the moon, she said,/ between my teeth/ and now it is gone/ and I am lost forever."

Alexandra Zarins predominantly works with oil painting. Zarins is fascinated by the human figure and the psychology of portraiture. The artist draws inspiration from the Old Masters to reflect and respond to the figure in the context of our contemporary world. Leaning into the language of caricature and satire, she explores imagined alternate paradigms of people and creatures revelling and rioting in debauched arenas like playgrounds of hell. These worlds portray the night - which functions as the alien influence - in which our recognisable identities are changed. Disrupting the fun: the untamed ferocity and celebration of visceral impulses offered here, gives way to hedonism, and turns salacious and sinister, haunted by an undercurrent of existential dread. Her paintings satisfy a perverse desire to indulge in the grotesque and obscene, sometimes confronting us with uncomfortable reflections of society.  

Gokula Stoffel’s paintings embody traditional techniques as well as the use of materials such as glass, wool and aluminium. Abstraction and figurative elements are weaved into her works with the outlines of human elements such as hair, a significant recurring motif within her oeuvre.  In her work the human presence is more an object or an implication. Stoffel explores the possibilities of painting through a continuous investigation into portraits, landscapes, cutouts, and abstract textures. Memories, mental images and psychological states become materialised on the artist’s canvas. 

The moon between my teeth runs through July 22, 2023.