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strange devices, all the time; which accumulated waste from the world in order to recycle them later. With
cans of sardines, Isaac built since electronic objects to small boxes that served to him as mini-cabinets where
he kept systematically all those elements from everyday life. His presence was crucial in the life of Gerchman,
who with him learned to build worlds and when he died he inherited his tools and his passion for building ob-
jects. The first of these imaginary worlds was a theater, where some characters acted whom Gerchman drew
on paper. He stuck them in cardboard and to sustain them, tied to a stick. His childish representations were
fully connected to reality. He was not interested in inventing fantasies, but rather to interpret the news from
the radio. The
Repórter Esso
was the program that related the events of the world. So the reality was already
the hub of his playfully history. He lived a Brazil of military dictatorships and, although one of his passions was
to reread and see a thousand times the collection of magazines from his father about the war, where carefully
he learned to distinguish each of airplanes, cars and tanks, Gerchman always has been a pacifist. When he
finished high school, he was admitted in the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes, course that interrupted when
he had to perform military service. But, in the barracks, a commander discovered his passion and gave him
the task to draw the different perspectives of the defense points of the Copacabana Fort. He for other ways
returned to draw the letters that his father had taught him and that the military used for signaling all codes
of the barracks.
Although he has later returned to the Escola de Belas Artes, he did not finish his studies because had formed
within him a continuous dissatisfaction. Rejected the mandatory academicism, as would systematically reject
what had a dictator smell.
The Commitment with Reality
Life was on Copacabana. His artistic creation had an interest in Rio de Janeiro. He worked during the day and
painted at night what interested him: the urban view from his window. The space claustrophobia and the
simultaneous experiences that occurred when a light was switch on, and another was off in a building led to
a first season, which was pivotal because was formulated one of much restlessness that will be the axles of
his work:
Moradias Coletivas
. He lived in the building 135 of Rua Barata Ribeiro. In front, was a cross section of
what was urban life, the simultaneity of some buildings fromwhose windows everything happened. As much
as that the anthropologist Gilberto Velho conducted a study about that building, the 200.
This obsession about reality and the artistic entertainment led him to get his first job at the publisher
Manche-
te
, where he graphically disposed the photo novels
Sétimo Céu
and other pages of that magazine. From that
balcony, stepping into two realities, he focuses attention on what will be his fundamental themes: the feeling
of love and commitment with reality, everything flooded by the world of words. The construction of spaces is
part of his language. The completion of a sentimental inventory and another about events, with the support
of black and white photographs that he gathered to the news from the newspapers, has ordered his center of
attention. Gerchman watched society with a keen eye. He felt a sort of fascination and rejection at the same
time for the town’s conditions, for the society prototypes, by the frivolous symbols of beauty. He struggle
against the advertising
slogans
which sell happiness through a smile of toothpaste. On the other hand, the
popular attitude validated on him a more authentic category. Without knowing it, was committed to currents
that were part of his time: the Pop Art and Conceptual Art.
He was a human being with rebellion in the skin, who looked askance at the established orders. With him
elapsed the ‘80s, the laws of
Proibido Proibir
, were his life arguments. Of the many symbols of that time,
stayed an inventory. He painted the pill and performed a portrait of
Misses
in swimsuit and with high heels