Draft:Teodora Axente

Teodora Axente (born 1984 in Sibiu) is a Romanian artist based in Cluj who is known for her figuratively rendered paintings of enigmatic characters in a surreal and mysterious setting that creates a juxtaposition between the material and the spiritual. Axente received both her MFA and PhD at the Univerisity of Art and Design, Cluj Romania (also known as 'The School'). In 2007, she was trained at the Ecole Superieure de Beaux-Art de Rennes in France. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Art in Cluj-Napoca, Romania; the Art Center Hugo Voeten in Herentals, Belgium; the Museum for Contemporary Art and Culture of the Historical Psychiatric Clinic in Bremen, Germany; the Frissiras Museum in Athens, Greece; the BMoCa Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulders, Colorado, the United States of America and the Essl Museum Klosterneuburg, Austria. In 2011 she won the ESSL Art Award CEE at the Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Vienna, Austria followed by winning the Award for European Painting at the Frissiras Museum in Athens, Greece in 2017. Axente is represented by gallery rosenfeld in London.

Early life
Axente was influenced by several Romanian artists, such as Corneliu Baba and Gheorghe Anghel ; but also Velázquez – one of her favourites still today -, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca, Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Gerhard Richter, Borremans and Berlinde de Bruyckere.

Throughout Axente's body of work, certain recurring elements captivate our attention. These include costumes crafted from aluminium foil, cardboard, transparent foil, taxidermy, and the evocation of human-animal metamorphosis. In a conversation with Julien Delagrange for the magazine Contemporary Art Issue, Axente delves into the profound connection between her use of costumes and a childhood memory: "Another childhood game, among many other games, was the pleasure of dressing up in different clothes and objects that I found in my grandparents’ house. [...] Now, looking with today’s eyes, I find that the experiences of my childhood led me to this path of painting, and the concept of my works reflects fragments of that period."

Critical reception
Revd Jonathan Evens, reviewing Axente's paintings in the group exhibition 'Contemplating the Spiritual in Contemporary Art' at gallery rosenfeld, praises her use of collage "to find new ways to see and show the traditional images of the dead and resurrected Christ."