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for the formalization of a synthesis necessary today. In Brazil, the image idolatry reaches a redundancy level
and falls into a dangerous doldrums; there are like an exercise of the image’s power, but that does not lead
to changes and tends to turn to an aestheticism, if not for a total collection of anecdotes.”
3
The production of Gerchman operates, then on two axes: the image overcoming and the semantic games
accentuation, which aimed at critical connections with real, through the mental synthesis. In this case, the
isolated word finding these nexus, procedures of the tangible and neo-tangible, plays a relevant role in the
New York production of Gerchman. The word is also architecture and sculpture. Thereby is what happens with
the work
Ar
, a sculpture to large open spaces, made of transparent acrylic glass. In the work, as there was se-
paration between the elements of the letter, the vertical shaft of the “R” can be seen as “I”, which would give
the English word “Air”. There is as well a social query: the sculpture, translucent, rises against the polluted air.
It is true that since 1966 Gerchman had his work-oriented onto three dimensions, when he produced his
“marmitas” and “caixas de morar”, for example. But now the process is deliberately to stimulate conceptual
relationships. In other work, it is the use of the word
sky
, dissected in
eye
,
yellow
and
line
; in another one is the
union of the words
man
and
woman
; an S of dark wood on white-gray sand meanders the word
snake
, in the
middle is the word
sinuous
and finally in the bottom
sign
. It is from the same period of the sculpture of letters
Lute work that would be a monument to the asphalt, or the poetic
Marazul-marazul
, of transparent polyester,
which should stay floating in the cove of Botafogo. Gerchman would explain his work: I do not think the word
in fine arts leads to a ‘literary’ vision than it should be visual or tactile. I find important to reduce the word to
the essential, the meaning alone spent. I want to relearn it. The redundancy of putting the word water written
inside a cube of water excels more it gains overload information.”
The logic is of an unfolding of sense. Against oblivion, the word entered in a form concerning it accentuates
it significance. It is remembered and reactivated. At the same time, there is a playful game in these relations
between the word and the thing. About them, Oiticica remembers of Lewis Carroll when he refers to
às letras
de bolso e às coisas de bolso
(the letters of pocket and the pocket things). “I detain a playful vision of art, to be
a child would be the salvation for all of us. I propose a visual art, conceptual and tactic.” Gerchman would say
when arrived to Brazil in 1971.
If many of these works rely on the date of the time, is because the Gerchman’s conviction was not to separate
from reality. Indeed such works, quite different of what other artists were doing at the time, they nevertheless
have a critical direction. They are not a parenthesis for the joy of ideas. Even playful, such works do not avoid
the initial design of the artist: this tantalization about the real object, this constant quest to capture the real,
either lyrical or dramatic.
In this period Gerchman also performs the film
Triunfo Hermético
4
, where the main question carries a symbo-
lic approach of the earth. And, finally, falls for Levi Strauss, mainly for
Tristes Trópicos
. “I finish
Tristes Trópicos
,
which is an amazing poem about Brazil. I found in the structuralism a method of analysis for Latin Americans.
The problems of anthropology, the Indian discovery, the role of social disaggregation caused by the colonizer,
3
OITICICA, Hélio.
Série Aberta 1 / Gerchman
. London, c. July 30, 1969, f. August 4, 1969. Available at: http://www.itaucultural.org.
br/aplicexternas/enciclopedia/ho/home/dsp_home.cfm. (N.O.).
4
See the screenplay of
Triunfo Hermético
, published in this book (N.O.).