“An artist has the social responsibility to disseminate
his ideas through unconventional presentations”
André Cadere (Romanian artist in Paris)
Some surprises could be seen at the exhibition Making Worlds by Daniel Birnbaum in the 53rd Venice International Art Biennale and they referred to the presence of artists who were already deceased, but well present in the international art scene: Blinky Palermo, Oyvind Fahlstrom and Andrè Cadere. There were several nameplates for the latter in the various rooms you walked through and this was because near the caption there was a colored bar made up of several rings of different sizes.
Andrè Fall he was a Romanian who, born in Warsaw, Poland in 1934 and died in Paris in 1978, landed in Paris in the 1960s (1967) in search of fortune. His was a search for himself, for a real identity that was denied to him in the East of the Soviet bloc and therefore he looked for it among the emigrants, waiting to get to know the environment: the Parisian artistic milieu. In this association with artists of the 1960s, he brought with him the seed of marginality, first politics that he had known in Communist countries, then of diversity as a Romanian who arrived as an immigrant in Paris. Here, in this multi-ethnic metropolis, his proto-conceptual artistic conscience will be clarified, moving between a concept of “situationist” art and the request for freedom of mental movement whose impediment he tended to identify in political power and in the structure of the hierarchy. artistic: galleries, market and museums. As always happens in intellectual circles there are artists who consider themselves more artists than others and therefore his inclusion in the Parisian entourage also presents difficulties due to a different, other way of reading the artistic culture of that country and of denouncing its structure of power. Obviously the immigrant is always under scrutiny, more is required of him and often to dissuade him from being part of the group he would like to belong to, therefore to elegantly oust him. Choosing not to paint or make art in a traditional way, André Cadere invents his own pictorial art made of wooden bars and rings that have mathematical relationships between height and diameter and internal color relationships. The very height of the wooden bars covered with colored wooden rings served him to create an imbalance in the Parisian artistic environment. The artist took these works with him as he wandered around the city or installed them in public environments: bars, street corners, metro carriages, exhibitions of artist friends. Unlike Buren who used standardized elements in his work, Cadere accepts the anomaly in the repetition, indeed he makes this an element of inconsistency as a correction of the standard element, in fact the colored wooden bar does not always maintain the same relationships: red, blue, white but alters them by putting different whites then red, blue and so on. Furthermore, this structural anomaly also takes up its operational scope in the arrangement of the individual rods in sequences and as well in the variation of their height and thickness measurements, as in the habit of placing them in interstitial spaces. His discomfort as an immigrant, the feeling of being different, causes this to become the search for an element that interferes with the norm and from here the concept of inconsistency, of anomaly arises.
In those years, among the artists trying to make their way in Paris, there was Biagio Pancino, Italian painter who has lived in Paris since 1952who after having done various jobs finally has a contract with an art dealer for his painting with Venetian expressionist roots and who is moving towards sculpture with a great sense of innovation. He creates small sculptures with the wood of Thonet chairs that André Cadere himself finds splendid and innovative and writes about it in the Mou Gallery’s attendance book: “Well done, it’s a new sculpture! A. Falling”. But that’s another story.
BIAGIO PANCINO VS ANDRE’ CADERE
Dear Boris, after our common visit to the 53rd Venice Art Biennale, I tried to reconstruct some thoughts in reference to your request to tell the story of my friendship with Andrè Cadere who greatly impressed you with his work at the exhibition Fare Mondi by Daniel Birnbaum. Here are the following notes in this regard. “At the opening of my sculpture exhibition at the Mou gallery in Paris in November 1967 I met Andrè Cadere for the first time who was accompanied by his friend Bishofphausen and the gallery owner Weiller. He immediately invited me to see his exhibition, which he set up a few days later, at the Marché d’Art Expérimental. There he presented a trendy polychrome op/art work (the famous stick only brought it around three or four years later). He introduced me to the gallery owner Jannink, who, seeing the enthusiasm of how Cadere spoke about my work, took me on his gallery staff without hesitation. This was followed by my presence in the collective “Confrontation 68” at the Zunini gallery where I met Cadere. From that moment I shared my Parisian life with Cadere together with the other artists of the gallery: the Lettrists Lemaitre and Isou; the situationists Wolman, Dufrene and JL Brau and among others Claude Rutault, Aubertin etc.. Later in 1972 I settled in Sens and so I lost sight of everyone a bit, obviously we saw each other at the vernissages at the exhibitions, in the reference galleries and in cafes. At that time we frequented the same neighborhoods and places that our generation did. In my personal memory I see him as tall, distinguished, well-groomed, always with his slightly sad smile and his calm and simple speech. Then in the years 1971/72 he always appeared accompanied by his colored cane: “My support” he called him. I remember that during the protest against an exhibition at the Pompidou in 1972 in the Grand Palais area he made a tactical action that surprised us all. As he moved following the demonstrators, a CRS policeman blocked him with his baton and told him: “You can’t pass with this weapon! Stop.” He replied: “No sir, this is a work of art and it is my weapon!” and continued through the crowd. His early death surprised us all a bit.”
Biagio Pancino
