Mabon

Kristoffer Axen (b. 1984)
Kristoffer Axén’s atmospheric paintings
are often auto-biographical as a means of
tapping into the wider human condition.
Works revolve around themes including
the utopia of childhood, the temporary,
dreamlike, quality of reality and the
unconscious search for something oblique
or unspecified. A sense of nostalgia is
often tinged with an overarching feeling of
the melancholy of transience. Inspired by
cinematic imagery, anonymous photographs
from the internet and childhood snapshots,
Axén’s paintings and drawings are often
bordering the dreamstate and the inner
world. While contemporary and historic
references include Michael Borremans,
Mamma Andersson, Vilhelm Hammershoi
and Richard Diebenkorn, his use of textured
mechanical pencil for the drawings and
the juxtaposed realism with the simplified
blocks in his paintings are uniquely his own.
Kristoffer Axén was born in Stockholm,
Sweden where his still resides. He is
a selfself-taught painter, who studied
fine-art photography at the International
Center of Photography in New York
between 2008-2009, a city in which he
lived and worked until 2013. Axén’s works
have been exhibited internationally in
solo exhibitions in New York, Copenhagen,
Stockholm and in numerous group shows
around the world, notably at Liljevalchs
Spring Show in Stockholm, Sweden,
Aperture Gallery in New York, USA
and at Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne,
Switzerland. Axén’s works are included
in many private and public collections
including as the ICP collection, Michaelis
School of Fine Arts and MONA and he has
been published in articles from magazines
including Zoom Magazine, The New York
Times and Vogue Italia.
‘Entropy’
oil and acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 cm
104