Versão HTML básica
167
ALGUMAS PALAVRAS SOBRE RUBENS GERCHMAN
(1994)
1
Damián Bayón
“Several current findings: Most people look but not see. Many artists and contemporaries critics do not like of
art because they do not like the world, of people, of things that populate this world.” Rubens Gerchman – in
this today’s barren and monotonous times of fine arts – is an exception to the rule. He does nothing than to
look, frommorning to night and almost like a job, with a touching dedication. And for what he looks is recor-
ded on his retina as a photographic camera, until – later on – within this collection of images will worthwhile
them to create drawings, illustrations, paintings. Not literally, more like in a citation form, of transfigured
remembrance to which he adds – thereupon – his personal creation, enriching, deforming, imaginative.
This crowd that appears in some of his recent works is composed of faces: with eyes, with mouths. Social
critique, caricature? Not in the pejorative sense of the term, because what predominates in his performing is
an act of human solidarity. Gerchman – for his own pride – is gregarious, like people, talking to them, to min-
gle with them. The French have an expression which – translated – means something like: “The more crazy
we are, more laughs we do.” This could be a Gerchman’s motto, who loves to socialize, even with strangers.
Walking, drive a car, cycle through a city with this Brazilian painter is to listen to a continuous comment of
what happens around him: for him there is neither ugly nor beautiful, only the visible counts. And as he is
unquestionably curious, everything is worthy of being recorded, so that, one day, a week, a month or a year
later appears in, one of his works, reworked and converted into something else which we will call a painting.
With the difference, that this painting, attested with abstract signs, figurative, recognizable, transposed, will
function as the totality, in which there is confusion of forms, glaring colors, highlighted sometimes with an
energetic black dash, that serves as the structure of this whole apparent delirium.
Is a popular painter, populist or even major-populist Rubens Gerchman? Not as much as some, want to por-
tray him to stand out. The thing is more complicated than it seems. He is an artist who is inspired by everyday
life that circulates us: advertising, cinema, television, illustrated magazines. At first glance, his attitude seems
to be of a tomfoolery, of carnival festivity, although he also has his romantic side and he stays deeply moved
tomfoolery with couples kissing like in the cover of photo novels from which he does not laugh, but treats to
sublimate them in a possible form of art through a debugging work.
His countryman Ferreira Gullar expressed it admirably: “The pictorial language problems are the concern of
a minority, but the war, the sex, the morality, the hunger, the freedom are problems of all human beings.”
It is of these themes that Rubens Gerchman nourishes himself to communicate his visual euphoria which is
understandable, caring and never caustic, vengeful or cruel. All Latin American countries should rely – at least
– with one of those artists who are not resentful. And for defending human and humanitarian principles, do
not do it distilling poison, but giving us all what we need, a hope supplement in our best values.”
1
BAYÓN, Damián.
A Few Words About Rubens Gerchman
. In: BAYÓN Damián, ESCALLÓN, Ana Maria.
Gerchman
. Rio de Janeiro:
Printz-Z, 1994. (N.O.).