André Cadere

André (or Andrei) Cadere was born in Poland, grew up in Romania and died from cancer in Paris in 1978. He was best known for his handmade series of painted round wooden bars, challenging the boundaries between painting and sculpture. Cadere was one of the first artists to realize that objects were inseparable from the 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. His bars could be positioned in all sorts of relations to their surroundings (on walls, floors, propped between the two, etc.), but he would also carry them around a number of outdoor locations and into other people’s shows and openings, even when not invited, which made him quite ”infamous” at the time.