From her first works, Colombian artist María Fernanda Cardoso has used geometry to organize the materials with which she composes her sculptural objects, re-codifying Modernist formal strategies with symbolically charged materials.
Cardoso uses taxidermied animals and plastic flowers, which refer respectively to pre-Columbian myths and funerary rites, or natural elements like bones, gourds, panelas (“bricks” of unrefined sugar), all of them with strong links to local traditions in her native Colombia. But in these works the element or “material” maintained its own character, with geometry appearing invariably as an ordering principle.
In the majority of these works, the repetition of similar elements of idiosyncratic forms created a structural effect by association. In the series of works with butterflies and seahorses, the intrinsic geometry of the elements is brought forward to making it an integral part of the overall composition. Cardoso uses the formal characteristics of each element to effect an operation of synthesis, where each element loses its independence in favor of a broader image of great complexity and formal richness.