Miguel Ángel Cárdenas

Miguel Ángel Cárdenas was born in El Espinal, Colombia, in 1934. He studied architecture at the Universidad Nacional in Bogota (1952-1953) and Visual Arts at the Academia de Bellas Artes (1955-1957). His first exhibition in Bogotá was at the Biblioteca Nacional and then, in 1959, he showed his work at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, the Museum de Zea in Medellin and, later, at the Gallería La Tertulia in Cali. With a grant from the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, he studied at the Escuela de Artes Gráficas in Barcelona (1962) and then he moved to the Netherlands where he lived ever since. His work is in the collections of cultural institutions including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, among others. Cárdenas's most recent shows titled "Warming Up," was held in May 2015 at the Instituto de la Visión in Bogotá, which included a selection works centered on the subject of human warmth. A pioneer of electronic media, performance and installation, Miguel Ángel Cárdenas produced a body of daring work—for the 1960s—that addressed controversial issues associated with sexuality, eroticism and the moral paradigms and cultural models of Colombia in an European context. Cardenas, who acknowledged his homosexuality upon arriving in Europe in 1962 (thanks to a scholarship), always knew that he wanted to escape the prevailing moralistic attitudes in Colombia at the time. His early artistic endeavors centered on his development as an abstract painter and resulted in works that gained him recognition within the local art scene and became part of institutional collections. But back then his creativity was contained. The writings of Jean Genet brought Cárdenas closer to "other" realities and customs of European society as well as to the dramaturgy that encouraged him to make performances and video art. Beyond the academic, Cárdenas's education included his understanding that everyday life is an essential part of the artistic experience. For his Warming Up series, he would arrive at a particular place and, relying on the appeal of his Latin American flair, he would interact, strike conversations, laugh with and charm families from the Netherlands. This work was recorded and is part, along with other videos, of the projects that he developed with his Warming up etc etc etc art production house, whose original logo represents a flower/vagina. In the writings of Bertrand Russell, Michel Cardena—the identity that Cárdenas adopted in the Netherlands to avoid, among other things, his catholic given name—saw confirmation of a need to reject the suffocating and discriminating religion in which he was raised, in favor of the values of freedom that he cherished. Sexuality in its most eroticized and explicit sense is a central theme in the work of Cárdenas, who is the protagonist in several of them. While others may see fluids, orgasms and moans as abject, they will never be vulgar to Cárdenas for he approaches sex as something sacred and beautiful. Words like fuck, cunt or dick were included in works where he sought to emphasize the sublime nature of sexual relations between men and women, men and men and women and women. The pieces created by Cárdenas from 1964 and on are undoubtedly pioneers in offering proposals that combine pop with sexual themes that can even be read in the abstract paintings that Cárdenas worked so hard to develop. Some of these series were included in a seminal 1964 European exhibition titled "New Realists and Pop Part" shown in The Hague, Vienna and Brussels.