The series of works created for the exhibition "Dipping into matter" goes back to motives and material from the past trying to winnow and essentialize it. Teodora's work becomes singular by its process of creation. First there is a story created or a state of mind that will be staged in a theatrical way with setting and props, a part of the process that is very engaging and elaborate but remains hidden to recipient of the work. In the photographs the objects become metaphors or hints to a state of mind, an inner struggle, in short: matters of the soul.

From one mise-en-scene come many works around the subject chosen for inspiration: "I work in series focusing on parts and details from the big setting giving importance to details that can have their own story and meaning within that same photo or project." says Teodora Axente. When thinking of 'matter' one would rather think of something solid. But 'dipping' is only possible in liquid or viscous material. Like paint. It is the matters of the soul, spiritual struggles or anxious heart's thoughts which are "dipped into matter" - materialized in paint. In a somber palette of hues mimicking the faded, darkened oil paintings of times long past. Giving them that same feeling and power.

Fittingly to this unity of spirit and material in subject and form Axente references Gaston Bachelard who in regards to the big changes in science in the 20th century (closing with the Aristotelian logic, the Newtonian mechanics and the Euclidian geometry) argued for a change in philosophical thinking in an attempt to unify the two opposed camps of empirists and rationalists. Respectively a pluralism of ways of thinking because there are no simple subject-matters, only complex ones - as complex as the inner life depicted by Teodora Axente.

"By means of art man takes over reality through a subjective experience. An artistic discovery occurs each time as a new and unique image of the world, a hieroglyph of absolute truth. It appears as a revelation, as a momentary, passionate wish to grasp intuitively and to touch all the laws of this world—its beauty and ugliness, its compassion and cruelty, its infinity and limitations. Through the image is sustained an awareness of the infinite: the eternal within the finite, the spiritual within matter, the limitless given form.'' (Andrej Tarkovsky)