Ana Cardoso
Ana Cardoso (Lisbon, 1978) lives and works between Lisbon and New York. Her multifaceted painting practice employs an array of medium-specific approaches: from abstraction to formlessness, materiality to illusion, conceptualism to the ready-made. She explores painting’s elastic content in relation to its context, its production in relation to its presentation; and pivots between the viewer and the history of painting. For her, throughout history but also in this digital age, the viewer activates and performs the painting, its flatness and its depths. She works with predefined structures – modular canvases that fit comfortably the length of her open arms, (triangles, squares, parallelograms, rectangles etc.) – that mutate into dynamic new compositions which are then again reshuffled, recombined, stacked, or moved through a vast landscape of fragments. Cardoso’s paintings reveal different dimensions throughout the different moments of their production and exhibition process. Optical folds are suggested when the works are installed; her configurations play with recto-verso concepts and three-dimensionality; front and back are simultaneously presented to activate the broader site of painting. Within Ana Cardoso’s inclusive painting corpus, Neo-Concretism and Formalism stand out as open source alphabets that the body inhabits to reformulate former logics and parameters, using structure and the monochrome as vessels for romantic experimentation, site of accidents, contamination, and a continuous stream of self-reflexive and mediated gestures.
Ana Cardoso received her MA in Fine Art from the Hunter College, New York, in 2006.
Her most recent exhibition, Leaky Abstraction, is on view at MAAT Museum, Lisbon, until September 4, 2023.
Cardoso has had solo or duo exhibitions at Renata Fabbri, Milan (2023); Nuno Centeno, Porto (2019); Parapet Real Humans, St Louis (2018); Temnikova & Kasela, Tallin (2017); Jablonka Maruani Mercier, Knokke (2016); Andrew Rafacz, Chicago (2015); MNAC, Lisbon (2015); Longhouse Projects, New York (2014); Maisterravalbuena, Madrid (2012); among others.
Some of her group exhibitions include venues such as Galerias Municipais – Galeria da Boavista, Lisbon (2022); Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (2018–19); Rachel Uffner, New York (2015); Cluj-Napoca Art Museum, Cluj (2012); Marianne Boesky, New York (2012); Prague Biennial 5, Prague (2011); Tate St Ives, Cornwall (2011); Simone Subal, New York (2011); The Kitchen, New York (2009).
Her work has been featured in Artforum, Flash Art, Mousse, Modern Painters, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, Contemporânea, and included in the survey book Painting Now edited by Suzanne Hudson, published by Thames & Hudson (London) in 2015.
She has been awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant (2019–20) and was a fellow of Shandaken: Projects, Paint School master class, New York (2018–19).
Ana Cardoso (Lisbon, 1978) lives and works between Lisbon and New York. Her multifaceted painting practice employs an array of medium-specific approaches: from abstraction to formlessness, materiality to illusion, conceptualism to the ready-made. She explores painting’s elastic content in relation to its context, its production in relation to its presentation; and pivots between the viewer and the history of painting. For her, throughout history but also in this digital age, the viewer activates and performs the painting, its flatness and its depths. She works with predefined structures – modular canvases that fit comfortably the length of her open arms, (triangles, squares, parallelograms, rectangles etc.) – that mutate into dynamic new compositions which are then again reshuffled, recombined, stacked, or moved through a vast landscape of fragments. Cardoso’s paintings reveal different dimensions throughout the different moments of their production and exhibition process. Optical folds are suggested when the works are installed; her configurations play with recto-verso concepts and three-dimensionality; front and back are simultaneously presented to activate the broader site of painting. Within Ana Cardoso’s inclusive painting corpus, Neo-Concretism and Formalism stand out as open source alphabets that the body inhabits to reformulate former logics and parameters, using structure and the monochrome as vessels for romantic experimentation, site of accidents, contamination, and a continuous stream of self-reflexive and mediated gestures.
Ana Cardoso received her MA in Fine Art from the Hunter College, New York, in 2006.
Her most recent exhibition, Leaky Abstraction, is on view at MAAT Museum, Lisbon, until September 4, 2023.
Cardoso has had solo or duo exhibitions at Renata Fabbri, Milan (2023); Nuno Centeno, Porto (2019); Parapet Real Humans, St Louis (2018); Temnikova & Kasela, Tallin (2017); Jablonka Maruani Mercier, Knokke (2016); Andrew Rafacz, Chicago (2015); MNAC, Lisbon (2015); Longhouse Projects, New York (2014); Maisterravalbuena, Madrid (2012); among others.
Some of her group exhibitions include venues such as Galerias Municipais – Galeria da Boavista, Lisbon (2022); Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (2018–19); Rachel Uffner, New York (2015); Cluj-Napoca Art Museum, Cluj (2012); Marianne Boesky, New York (2012); Prague Biennial 5, Prague (2011); Tate St Ives, Cornwall (2011); Simone Subal, New York (2011); The Kitchen, New York (2009).
Her work has been featured in Artforum, Flash Art, Mousse, Modern Painters, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, Contemporânea, and included in the survey book Painting Now edited by Suzanne Hudson, published by Thames & Hudson (London) in 2015.
She has been awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant (2019–20) and was a fellow of Shandaken: Projects, Paint School master class, New York (2018–19).

- Ana Cardoso, Path Finder, 2018-2022Acrylic and oil pastel on linen canvas, 190x78 cm. Ph. João Neves
- Ana Cardoso, Form Reform (Atomic Abyss), 2022Acrylic on sewn linen and cotton, variable dimensions. Ph. João Neves
- Ana Cardoso, Your Identity History Summary Request Has Been Accepted, 2021-2022Acrylic, oil and oil pastel on linen and cotton, 118x118 cm.
Ph. João Neves - Ana Cardoso, 26QNFLU9, 2021Acrylic and graphite on primed linen canvas, 39.4x39.4x56 cm. Ph. João Neves
- Ana Cardoso, Positional Coherence (How A Hidden Dynamic Skeleton Organizes The Underlying Chaotic Motion), 2020-2021Acrylic, pencil and oil pastel on primed and unprimed linen, 160x120 cm. Ph. João Neves
- Ana Cardoso, Hanging-Low, 2021Acrylic and oil on sewn linen canvas, 111.5x111.5 cm.
Ph. João Neves - Ana Cardoso, Compression Catches Its Shadow (Exclamation), 2014Acrylic on cotton and felt, 383x185 cm
- Ana Cardoso, Preâmbulo, 2021-2022Acrylic on sewn linen, 120x120 cm. Ph. João Neves
- Ana Cardoso, Emergent, 2021-2023Acrylic on cotton and linen, diptych, 208x118 cm (overall). Ph. João Neves
- Ana Cardoso, Recto-Verso (Fold), 2017Acrylic on cotton and linen, 222x111 cm
- Ana Cardoso, Private-States, 2016Acrylic on cotton, 312x156 cm
- Ana Cardoso, Fold (Lining), 2016Acrylic on sewn linen and cotton canvas 224x112 cm
- Ana Cardoso, Submerged Twice, 2019-2023Acrylic, oil and oil pastel on linen and cotton, diptych, 120x120 cm. Ph. João Neves
- Ana Cardoso, Lava-Pés, 2016Lava stone (basalt), Epson ultra-chrome inkjet print on silk. Variable dimensions.
- Ana Cardoso, Doc (D-dimensional Data) VI, 2016Acrylic on linen canvas, 106,25x84 cm

- Ana Cardoso


- Ana Cardoso,
- Athanasios Argianas
Apr 14-16, 2023
VIP Preview Apr 13
Established
Pav.3 – Booth 07

- Ana Cardoso
MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology
Mar 29 – Sep 11, 2023
Curated by João Pinharanda

- Gaia De Megni
Apr 10-16, 2023
In all subway stations, Milan

- Tim Etchells
La Triennale, Milan
Mar 30 – Apr 2, 2023
Created by Tim Etchells and Ant Hampton