Primero fue el gesto (First was the gesture)
Mindy Solomon is pleased to present a collaborative exhibition with AppArt Paris to showcase Uruguayan artist and 2025 Venice Biennale representative Eduardo Cardozo. For his first solo show in Miami, Cardozo will feature seminal works from 2009-2024.
Crafting works that speak to art history, materiality and time, Cardozo brings a warmth and subtlety to his surfaces. Whether it is a large-scale canvas that breathes through an unprimed surface of warm tones and soft saturated colors, or a textile work remade from scraps of canvas, each piece is a fragment of time. In works such as Péndulo, 2009 Cardozo creates a sense of delicately floating objects leaving a distinct slick or residue as they move through space. Gentle wisps of line tether form and leave the viewer entranced with the nebulous nature of the image. Íntimo, 2021 is a small work but extremely impactful. Utilizing his signature style of oil on layered canvas, he creates a work that is reminiscent of his studio walls and the plaster surfaces of historic old master paintings. In his magnificent presentation at the Venice Biennale, Cardozo created a space of contemplation in a sea of deeply political and challenging pavilions. Drawing reference to Old Master Tintoretto, he created a project called Latent, an immersive installation that seeks to create a relational act between two painters at a distance: the Uruguayan Cardozo and the Venetian Tintoretto. This dialogue consists of three moments: the nude, the wall of Cardozo’s studio, transferred to Venice using the stacco technique; the vestment, an interpretation that the Uruguayan artist makes of one of the sketches of Tintoretto’s Paradise; and the veil, a cloth sewn from the scraps of gauze used to move the walls of the studio. This generates a counterpoint between Uruguay and Italy, south and north, between Cardozo’s work and his reinterpretation of Tintoretto’s painting.
Cardozo is focused on the notion of “meticulous reflection” regarding material resources and the challenges of creating a painting that reflects a representation of “mental space”. His imagery is informed by the modernist works of Paul Klee, Francis Picabia, Wassily Kandinsky, and Hans Arp.
The series of works selected correspond to this research. Throughout the exhibition, the pictorial space is marked by the tempo of manual techniques to which the slow and shaky gesture of the brushstroke and the frequent voids and interruptions of the visual discourse can be seen and experienced. In this space Cardozo shares the process of creation with all of us.
About Eduardo Cardozo
Visual artist. Cardozo graduated from the National School of Fine Arts of Uruguay in 1990 from the workshop of Ernesto Aroztegui. Besides, he attended the School of Architecture of Universidad de la República for four years. In addition, thanks to a scholarship, Cardozo studied printmaking with Luis Camnitzer in Valdottavo (Italy), and took courses on video (El ojo disidente [The Dissident Eye]) and philosophy of art with Andrea Carriquiry. Among other distinctions, he has twice won the First Prize at Uruguay’s National Salon (2004 and 2012), the Bicentennial Painting Award (2011), the Municipal Biennale of Montevideo (1994) and the Paul Cézanne Award (1991), which earned him a scholarship to study in France. Cardozo has participated in multiple biennials: he represents Uruguay at the 60 th Venice Biennale (Italy, 2024) with the project “Latente”, participates in the first and fifth Mercosur Biennials in Porto Alegre (Brazil, 1997 and 2005), the Cuenca Biennial (Ecuador, 2001), the IV Do ut do Biennial “La morale dei singoli” in Pompeii (Italy, 2018-2019) and the Beijing Biennale (China, 2021). Since the late 80s, he has held dozens of solo and group exhibitions in Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, the United States, Germany, Spain, Austria, France and China. His work is part of important public and private collections in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Germany, France and the United States.
In 2008, the Argentinian publishing house Arte al Día put out the book Eduardo Cardozo: Obras realizadas entre 1990 y 2008 [Eduardo Cardozo: Works Produced Between 1990 and 2008], which provides a thorough, detailed overview of his oeuvre. Cardozo has taken part on multiple international art fairs, such as: Arteamericas (Miami, with Galería Sur, 2006), arteba (Buenos Aires, with Galería Sur, 2006), Cornice Art Fair (Venice, with Galería Sur, 2007), ARCOmadrid (with Galería Sur, 2008), SP-Arte (São Paulo, with Galería Sur, 2022), ESTE ARTE (Punta del Este, with Galería Sur, 2017-2023) and Pinta Miami (with AppArt París, 2023).
In addition, since the 1990s, Cardozo became more and more involved with performance artists and the performing arts. He served as stage designer on Tamara Cubas’ play No matarás [You Shalt Not Kill] (Teatro Victoria, 2003) and on Graciela Figueroa’s Intento cero [Zero Attempt] (Teatro Solís, 1996), and was a member of the performance art group Moxhelis between 1992 and 1994.
Cardozo has also carried out urban artistic interventions, such as Contrato de trabajo [Employment Contract] (2005) in Porto Alegre, El Quijote de Tres Cruces [Tres Cruces Quixote] in Montevideo (unfinished, 1994), and Señal de ajuste [Test Card] (2007), an intervention that made use of private broadcast media. Alongside Álvaro Zinno, he created the videos Estampitas [Prayer Cards] (1990), Like a piece of the sky, of the sky (1990) and Basal (2020), and with Agustín Banchero and Lucas Cilintano, the video La conciencia de Sísifo [Sisyphus’ Conscience] (2012), a production that earned him the Acquisition Award at the 55th National Award for Visual Arts Wifredo Díaz Valdéz.
At the same time, Cardozo has participated in group projects and collaborated with other artists. He has worked with Fernando Peirano in the workshop El sitio de Montevideo [The Siege of Montevideo]. In 1999, together with Jorge Barreiro, he was behind the installation La quimera de la seguridad, o cómo vivir sin correr riesgos [The Chimera of Safety or How to Live Risk-Free], held at the atrium of the city hall of Montevideo. In 2012, he carried out an intervention at Estancia Vik in José Ignacio; in 2015, Casa tierra [Earth House] at Bahía Vik; in 2016, he painted a series of murals in Playa Vik, in the sampling room and the cask storage room of Viña Vik (Chile), as well as another mural in the conglomerate’s hotel in Chile. In 2019, Cardozo performed artistic interventions at the Galleria Vik Milano (Italy), and in 2023, he did a large mural for the restaurant La Susana at the Hotel Bahía Vik in José Ignacio (Uruguay).
As far as teaching is concerned, he has taught seminars on Contemporary Painting in Casablanca, while students from IAVA High School, Artigas Teacher Training Institute and artists attend Cardozo’s atelier to exchange ideas on art.
In 2021, Cardozo did an artist residency at Portal de Luz in Pueblo Edén (Uruguay), where he produced Humano [Human]. He lives and works in Montevideo, Uruguay.
