Where do memories live in the body? In the arcane pad of the toes
In a breast as round as a plate
In the shhhh’d soft behind the knee or
The croft of the neck where the hair begins?
Yesterday, in the shop, the guy at the counter — generically middle-aged, efficiently pleasant, politely nondescript — had a tattoo in the restrained cave of his inner elbow. It read friends, scripted in a familiar lowercase, in the everything font, Times New Roman. A font with space, a flexibility to daydream. A font for history, for recipes and potions, a font for news and terror, a font for magic. In the landscape of this man's body, a community lives. Their dreams and aspirations, their fizzing collective possibilities and fears hidden in his nook. The word stretches and shifts as he swipes my day-to-day through the register. At times it abstracts, it fragments, it becomes, for a split second, an unknown. Anchored in the real, contorted by the elasticity the world requires.
It is this contortion of reality, the swirling of the known into the fantastical, that we find in Miguel Cardenas’ works. In Shadow Garden, these thrills and fears lurk - spaces we know, or may have once dreamt, dance in sheens of colour, charged with the surreal. Fragments break away with characterful intention.
House of the Spirits brings these narratives to the fore. Its architecture, Memphis-toned, becomes an invitation, a space to enter, or a space to protect, to intrude. At the door, a visitor with sturdy legs and plump bum, topped with the head of a bird. Their shoulders support a ladder, potentially for support or to fulfil a threat. In the window is a breast, its nipple catching the light. This painting presents a tipping point, the exposed breast a confidence, or a vulnerability. Our subconscious determines its possibilities.
In another frame, another snatch of this hypercolour landscape — The Great Parade. A figure pop pop pops cross-dimensions, a confident crunch across the painting. The figure holds proudly, a long-bodied bird, its beak leading the way. Both seem oblivious to the long-legged figure behind.
The main of the body, the essential organs blocked by green hills, or a green house, or a green crown — perhaps something that is all three. The legs make an assured but impossible diamond, their giant eye’s blue-ringed pupil slouched to the side.
Elsewhere in The Nervous System, a character, hip slid, bares all, arms wide, palms open, nerves pronounced and pulsing. Their smile seems both generous and nervous. There is no barrier between them and the emotions of the world. I panic for them. How true to be in the world with all this on show. Nerve endings thrilled with fresh air. Floating above them, attached by a string, or a line, or a hope, is a head backed by fins. Four of them dancing proudly, tracing the skull. The tip of the head pokes at the base of a mountain flirtatiously. It's all there in the edges.
It is in this place that Cardenas holds us tightly, framing us in the volatility of the dreamscape. A lushly skewed elusive familiar in the light of the near dusk. The works hum with telepathy, with folk tales, with oral histories made manifest.
When I was young I would spend hours in the garden while my mother and grandpa would plant the things that would feed us in the seasons to come. I would scramble around finding universes under rocks, following the cursive shapes of the bugs and butterflies as they moved in and out of our scene. A landscape generationally tilled, everything rooted with hope. Wishing goodwill into the unknown of the ground. It is here that I go in my mind when I need to magic my way into the extraordinary. To propel my history, using the things that made me to project me into the extremities of the universe in order to survive. In order to live and breathe. To know this space exists for me, the same space I find in Cardenas’ paintings, the same space I find in the cave of the cashier's elbow. A space not without its threats is the world's truest and most honest form of magic.
Lisette May Monroe
Kendall Koppe is thrilled to present Shadow Garden, Miguel Cardenas’ second solo exhibition with the gallery. With the spirit of exchange and collaboration while expanding the dialogue between galleries and artists — the exhibition takes place at Margot Samel, New York
Miguel Cárdenas (b.1973 Bogotá, Colombia) lives and works between Bogotá and New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: Mystic Animals and the Juggling of Hot Stones, Kendall Koppe, Glasgow (2022); Cruzando el Umbral, EACHEVE, Guayaquil, Ecuador (2021); Beyond the Fence, Chapter New York, New York (2021); Un Mundo Flotando en el Espacio, Licenciado, Mexico City
(2021); Despertar de los Demonios, La Balsa Arte, Bogotá (2020); CONDO, Koppe Astner at Metro Pictures, New York (2019) and Oasis, La Balsa Medellín, Medellín (2018). Recent group exhibitions include: Domestico, Fundacion San Lorenzo De Barichara, Barichara (2024); To be a giant and keep quiet about it (curated by Margot Samel), Yee Society, Hong Kong (2022); To be a giant and keep quiet about it, Margot Samel, New York (2022); Totems and Trophys, Proxyco, New York (2018); Obelisco, SN Macarena, Bogotá (2018); Mutatis Mutandis, Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá, Sede Chapinero, Bogotá (2017); Fourth of All, Gericke Paffrath, Düsseldorf (2017) and First of All, Gallery Ariane Paffrath, Düsseldorf (2016).
His work is included in the permanent collections of Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Bogotá; Museo de Arte de Pereira, Pereira; and Museo de Arte Moderno de Cartagena, Cartagena; KAI10 Arthena Foundation, Dusseldorf and Museum of Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island.
