Ana Cardoso

Your Payment Verification Code Is 26QNFLU9


24.01 – 18.03.2023


Opening: 24.01.2023, 6- 9pm 



Critical text by Gea Politi

Renata Fabbri is pleased to announce Your Payment Verification Code Is 26QNFLU9, the first personal show by Ana Cardoso (Lisbon, 1981) at the gallery. For the occasion, the artist presents a series of new paintings that inquire into the limits of the pictorial medium and the possibilities of its expansion into installation and sculpture.

Cardoso’s approach alternates between abstraction and formlessness, materiality and illusion, conceptualism and the ready-made. Starting from an in-depth investigation of the painting medium and, in particular, of the formalist and minimalist abstraction painting movements, the artist creates modular canvases, pre-defined and anthropometric structures that once assembled, juxtaposed, staggered, stacked one over the other or in motion such as within a wide landscape of geometric fragments, generate dynamic compositions able to alter the observer’s vision and perception of space.

Through the use of simple and elementary shapes – such as triangles, squares, parallelograms, rectangles – and the unlimited formal possibilities arising from their arrangement, Cardoso’s “canvas-objects” thus open up to a conceptual and interpretative complexity that questions the concept of “finished work”, in favor of an idea of painting as a performative and changing process. Considered, therefore, by the artist as a constantly evolving activity, the painting experience means, for Cardoso, a series of endless juxtapositions, second thoughts, reversals and restructurings, in the same manner as the construction of an image, whether real or virtual: a combination of shapes, colors and materials, but also textures, pixels and invisible codes, as evoked by the title of the exhibition.



Corresponding to a series of alphanumeric characters typical of online registration and authentication processes, the title, in fact, hints at the random and, at the same time, singular nature of the artist's activity and works on display. Behind the rigor and precision of the forms used, Cardoso's paintings reveal an experimental approach to form that is interpreted on the pictorial support in the alternation of backgrounds, layers, patterns and symbols: brushstrokes that are sometimes meditated, at other times more instinctive, blurring the boundaries of the canvas. Borrowing from the legacy of experiences such as neo-Concretism and formalism, Cardoso explores the fundamental concepts of surface, composition and color, encouraging dialogue with the past and, at the same time, seeing them as new alphabets, vehicles of romantic experimentation, a context for accidents, questions, contamination and encounters.

Ana Cardoso (Lisbon, 1978) lives and works between Lisbon and New York. She received her MA in Fine Art from the Hunter College, New York, in 2006. She has had solo or duo exhibitions at Nuno Centeno, Porto (2019); Parapet Real Humans, St Louis (2018); Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva Museum, Lisbon (2018); Temnikova & Kasela, Tallin (2017); Jablonka Maruani Mercier, Knokke (2016); Andrew Rafacz, Chicago (2015); MNAC – Contemporary Art Museum, Lisbon (2015); Múrias Centeno, Lisbon (2014); Longhouse Projects, New York (2014); Maisterravalbuena, Madrid (2012); Pedro Cera, Lisbon (2012); Soloway, New York (2011); Conduits, Milan (2011); and Southfirst, New York (2008); among others. Cardoso was included in group exhibitions at Galerias Municipais – Galeria da Boavista, Lisbon (2022); Cristina Guerra, Lisbon (2021); Renata Fabbri, Milan (2020); Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon (2018–19); MAAT Museum, Lisbon (2017); Rachel Uffner, New York (2015); Cluj-Napoca Art Museum, Cluj (2012); Prague Biennial 5 (2011); Tate St Ives (2011); The Kitchen, New York (2009); White Flag Projects, Saint Louis (2008); and Culturgest, Lisbon (2007). Her work has been featured in Artforum, Flash Art, Mousse, Modern Painters, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, Contemporânea and included in the book Painting Now edited by Suzanne Hudson and 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).

Renata Fabbri


Via A. Stoppani 15/c, 20129 Milano

info@renatafabbri.it

renatafabbri.it

+39 02 4244 9047



Press Office:

Sara Zolla press@sarazolla.com


Opening hours 


martedì - sabato


15.30 - 19.30


lunedì su appuntamento