As the white cube has been exhausted, I am into semi-darkness. But really I think painting should be installed.” ― Ana Cardoso on the best way to exhibit a painting.
There’s so much in terms of structure to Ana Cardoso’s work. A ritual of art for art’s sake, she marks the corners: NW, SE.
There are four corners to her space: the wands are green, the swords are blue, the cups are red, and the pentacles are gold.
If the West stands for the very feminine, here you see through a knitted metal net. On The Other Side… of the net the world is green, greener.
To the North a painting appears to stick out from the wall — at a distance you mistake it for a sculpture. And you do not find the allure until you look very closely. The cube opens up and exposes three faces, each one reflecting the other, maybe from the innards of the cube. The tip of the cube-protuberance carries the green of the feminine across the room. It is not a disease, but it is uneasy because of its unnerving color. The black, the void; the green should be around it, if the painting on the East side of the room is telling the truth.
Donald Judd comes to mind through the play of surfaces. The canvas could be wood.
To the East the rising sun casts a shadow: “It is for that which she is not that she wants to be desired as well as loved.” Her jouissance eludes the male gaze. Seduction inaugurates the phallic spectacle — some enigmatic X remains forever out of reach.
Going South. It is violet, purple, like purple skies, and the clouds. The net is there, like a veil, the same green from the West wall, only now In Between holding the shadows back from the purple sky.
Ana Cardoso’s circle includes sculpture in a second room. A very beautiful piece made of parts put together against the wall. Now you leave the circle and the mystery remains with you — cornered in you.