Alexander de Cadenet lives and works in London. His work in painting, sculpture and photography explores a range of themes from the paradoxical nature of inspiration to how we construe identity. 

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                        He has presented solo exhibitions at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Courtauld Institute of Art and has also been shown at Mu.ZEE Ostend, Beijing National Museum and within projects at Tate Britain and the Saatchi Gallery.

 

                         He is currently working towards completing The Final Gathering, intended as his final series of portraits based on a selection of sixty-five skull images from the thirty year archive.​

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“These works act as a celebration of existence while simultaneously questioning the value of worldly endeavour.”

TARNYA COOPER · EX-CHIEF CURATOR, NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

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“De Cadenet’s Skull Portraits re-energise the long histories of the painted vanitas… these will persist long after we become crematorium dust.”

PROFESSOR SARAH WILSON · THE COURTAULD INSTITUTE OF ART, 2010

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“The artist asks us not to consider the cosmic and metaphorical in opposition to the ordinary, but as being part of it, integral to it.”

OLIVER BASCIANO · ART CRITIC ART REVIEW

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“In his skull portraits, de Cadenet is using modern art language and processes to communicate the vital spiritual teaching of death in a way that is relevant to our time.”

PATRICK HOWE · AUTHOR OF THE AWAKENING ARTIST - WATKINS MIND BODY SPIRIT, 2017

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“Like altarpieces, their renderings of physical mortality are allied with a spiritual consciousness, a hint at the immortality of the soul.”

MELANIE MCGRATH, AUTHOR, 2002

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“The Life Burgers offer a sharp critique of the society we live in and yet simultaneously they are luxury objects in their own right.”

EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH, 2016

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“The Life Burger sculptures explore the relationship between the spiritual dimension of art and consumerism and, at their root are an exploration of what gives life meaning.”

REVD JONATHAN EVENS · ARTLYST, 2022

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“When it comes to de Cadenet’s exceptionally lush, louche, seductive, satirical, gorgeous and gold plate ‘life-burger’ sculptures, the problem and the solution are one and the same.”

SHANA NYS DRAMBOT · HEAD ART CRITIC LOS ANGELES TMES · WHITE HOT MAGAZINE, 2018

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"Digital negatives of everyday life have been transformed by the inversion process in such a way as to draw out the profoundly spiritual of those moments for the artist"

RICHARD DYER · EDITOR IN CHIEF THIRD TEXT

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