Born in Warsaw of Romanian parents, André Cadere produced a body of work based on the complementary concepts of presence and absence. Between 1970 and 1978 he orchestrated a series of events, or actions, designed to question the relationship between the art object and the space within which it is exhibited and evaluated. In fact, the term “exhibition” is too formal a word to apply to Cadere’s art, as his work attempts to reveal the arbitrary distinction between such sites as the gallery wall, the street corner, or the neighborhood bar. As Cadere often appeared in these sites holding the ever-present

A woman in a short white dress, wearing a pair of wings, walks onto the stage. She sits on a chair in the corner, facing away from the audience. A man enters, smoking a cigarette, and leans against the back wall, posturing. For a moment, the scene seems frozen; as in an image by Edward Hopper, emotional distance seems measured by space. Shortly thereafter, the “angel” turns on a tape recorder and the music—Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione de Poppea—begins. The lights come up on stage and the rest of the dancers enter. The introduction to Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s Ottone, Ottone, 1988, is an