Alejandro Cardenas

Alejandro Cardenas’ paintings and sculptures provide a vision of a post-human world wherein the relationship between human forms and the environment is one of unity and coexistence. Guided by his own imagination and inspired by a wide range of influences from Surrealism to Sci-Fi to magical realism, Cardenas immerses himself in the creation of surreal, polished post-human scenes. His gridded interiors populated by eerie, angular figures convey emotion through body language, resulting in a variety of suggested emotional expressions. 

Alejandro Cardenas (b. 1977, Santiago, Chile) completed his BFA at the Cooper Union School of Art in 2000. Before becoming a full-time studio painter, Cardenas had a successful career as a multimedia artist, working in illustration, graphic design, and videography. For over a decade, Cardenas served as the lead textile designer and art director for the influential fashion label Proenza Schouler. He was also a founding member of Lansing-Dreiden, a New York-based transdisciplinary art collective that produced musical albums, a literary journal, and artworks. Cardenas has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions internationally including Almine Rech, Paris, Shanghai, and New York; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Stems Gallery, Brussels; Harper’s, New York, NY; Matthew Brown, Los Angeles, CA; La Loma Projects, Pasadena, CA; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA. In 2022 two of his works were acquired by public institutional collections, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (ICA Miami) from the exhibition Wish You Were Here at Anat Ebgi. Alejandro Cardenas currently lives and works in upstate New York.