Background
Andre Cadere was born on May 20, 1934 in Warsaw, Poland. Having spent some years in Portugal, his family returned to Romania after the Second World War.
Cadere with Isa Genzken, Benjamin Buchloh, Marcel Broodthaers, Maria Gillisen and unknown in Brussels in 1974.
Andrei Cădere
Andre Cadere was born on May 20, 1934 in Warsaw, Poland. Having spent some years in Portugal, his family returned to Romania after the Second World War.
Cadere attended the Academy of Bucharest.
In 1967 Cadere moved to Paris where he pursued a career as an artist, developing an individual conceptual practice which focused on "barres de bois rond" (round bars of wood). Cadere developed his first barre de bois in 1970.
The batons became the principal prop within his performative events. With a baton in hand, the artist would infiltrate art gallery and museum openings to which he had not been invited. Alternatively, a baton would appear leaning against a wall in an exhibition in which his work was not meant to be included. As well as bringing his batons into the art world, Cadere also presented them in public spaces (including restaurants and subways), announcing ‘exhibitions’ where he would appear between specific hours every day over a certain period of time, engaging passers-by with discussions about his baton and art.
By 1972 Cadere had refined his construction process, creating batons composed of a series of painted wooden cylinders joined together through the centre with wooden doweling and glue. While the batons themselves vary in length and diameter, the length of each individual segment is always equal to its radius.
Cadere participated in a group exhibition at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels in 1974. He also had solo exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford, United Kingdom; Musee d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris; and P.S.1 Museum, New York City.
Andre Cadere died from cancer on August 12, 1978 in Paris, France.
Andre Cadere was best known for his handmade series of painted round wooden bars, challenging the boundaries between painting and sculpture. His most famous work was his "Barres de bois rond" (1970-1978), long wooden poles comprised of different coloured cylindrical units apparently uniform but each with deliberate error in their composition.
Round Wooden Bar
Untitled
Round Wooden Bar in Red, Blue, Orange, Green, Yellow and Violet
Round Wooden Bar
Untitled (Polychrome Bar)
Square Wooden Bar
Untitled Bar (A 13002040)
Round Wooden Bar
Untitled (Bar)
Untitled Bar (A-I 0203000 = 25 = I x 12 =)
6 Bars
Six Round Wooden Bars
Round Wooden Bar
Cubic Bar of Wood
Untitled Bar (A 00013020)
Round Wooden Bar
Cadere was one of the first artists to realize that objects were inseparable from market and institutional contexts: half of his focus was on the systems of distribution in the art world, as he introduced bars in galleries and retract them, usually carrying a bar like a staff.
Quotations: “My work does not have anything to do with the architecture, with the style, with the aesthetics of the gallery, but it does have something to do with what a gallery is. A gallery is a structure of power. My work has a critical attitude against that power. This is what I call the political in my work.”
