Almine Rech – Alejandro Cardenas

Fantasmi di Primavera [Ghosts of Spring] is the first Italian solo exhibition by the Chilean-born, New York - based artist Alejandro Cardenas (Santiago, 1977). It contextualizes a new body of work especially conceived for this occasion that merges, as always in his artistic research, a wide range of references borrowed from the history of art, science fiction, and Latin American literature.

Fantasmi di Primavera explores spiritual and fantastical subjects related to human interiority and cosmic landscapes, both inspired by Children of Memory (2023) - the third volume of a space saga by the British writer Adrian Tchaikovsky, and the experience of a non-objective, supernatural yet familiar world view taken from the tradition of magical realism, by authors like Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez.

Over the years, Cardenas has developed a distinctive style oscillating between figuration and abstraction. He fuses different stimuli taken from Surrealist dream-like spaces, Futurist velocity, and Renaissance artistic references in a unique, imaginative vision populated by his personal, oneiric micro-cosmos of figures, entities, and humanoids, as evidenced in his latest production.

Eugenio Viola, Ph.D.
Chief Curator MAMBO – Bogota Museum of Modern Art