@Galeria Aparte, UNAGE Iași (2024)
The work was conceived after the extraction of one of my wisdom teeth, a procedure preceded by prolonged pain. Following the removal, I produced a small sculpture of myself at the approximate scale of the tooth, holding a baseball bat.
The work inverts the usual relationship between body and object. The human figure is reduced to the dimensions of the tooth that caused the pain, while the bat introduces a gesture associated with retaliation. The scale shift produces an absurd confrontation: the body that suffered the pain reappears in miniature, armed against an object that is no longer there.
The title borrows from the familiar formula “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Here, however, the logic of retaliation collapses. The tooth has already been removed through a clinical procedure, leaving the miniature figure poised for an act of violence with no remaining target.
(As a side note: during my first visit to the dentist, around the age of seven or eight, I was startled by the sudden pain of the procedure and jumped off the chair ready to fight the dentist — a large, solid man.)
