Carolyn Cárdenas

Odd Couples

1990-1992

Paired paintings and dual themes allow for the exploration of modern alienation in today's world through ironic or strange juxtapositions. Using still lives and interiors, many different kinds of isolation are depicted from popular culture and questions of peer judgment, age, gender, and demographics. People from all walks of life share common manifestations of despair and denial. This series details the narrative and its detritus.

For example, in Happy Birthday and Happy Easter, a continuous space exists between the two black and white charcoal drawings hung in a diptych formation and framed separately. The content reveals two lively floral arrangements containing icons of drugs and sex, seen under the direction of the Easter Bunny.

Odd Couples continues to explore the possibilities of the interior scene. The room becomes the person; the person becomes the room. The inside of each is interchangeable. The outside, when included, is unattainable.

Deep space continues to help define the journey of the egg tempera brush and Renaissance techniques, along with an obsessive attention to detail. Collage and paper pieces add to the complexity of the aesthetic and thematic differentiations, as does varying scale in the works comprising Odd Couples.