Sus
imágenes de las décadas del '60 y del '70 se disolvían y se transformaban en
las corporeidades orgánicas y ornamentales del plástico y de la madera . Hoy
sus objetos, en peremne entropía, no apuntan a dirección alguna: separados de
su origen como aquellos fragmentos humanos, son también sin destino, al igual
que los objetos de la vida cotidiana, de los que a veces desconocemos su verdadera
identidad y ubicación. Sus Ars'88 son abstracciones representativas de escenas
límites de arribos- partidas, aperturas-cierres, anversos-reversos, relieves-hendiduras,
de lo positivo y negativo, de lo que transcurre o se detiene, en fin, una síntesis
del mundo, un concentrado del hombre, acciones y territorios que surgidos de
su interioridad, se ordenan al formalizarce, y en el pasaje de lo potencial
al acto, generan un objeto en yeso, cuya ponderabilidad visual alude al hierro
y a la madera.
Las hibridaciones de Norberto Gómez
Raúl Santana
Revista "CLASICA"-
Noviembre 1990
No
es tarea fácil clasificar las recientes producciones de Norberto Gómez. Este
escultor de 50 años ha venido desarrollando una de las más singulares y relevantes
obras de nuestro medio plástico y pareciera que siempre se resiste a su ubicación.
Ocurre que desde sus inicios, su trabajo ha estado signado por constantes transformaciones
que lo llevaron desde posiciones estrictamente geométricas hasta posiciones
abiertamente expresionistas; desde actitudes decididamente constructivas hasta
aquellas donde irrumpían en el espacio verdaderos gestos, la continuación de
impulsos que exteriorizaban una interioridad, desplegando una anatomía cargada
de analogías con la humana: insidiosas e intranquilizadoras metáforas de muerte
y aniquilación. Las obras recientemente expuestas en Galería Ruth Benzacar (de
extarordinaria realización), no abandonan el carácter insidioso de sus anteriores
etapas pero vienen a agregar otros sentimientos: ironía y humor - a veces francamente
negro- que hablan al espectador de su distanciamiento, de la objetivación de
un universo cargado de sugerencias logrado por la minuciosa construcción. Se
trata de disparatados monumentos que semejan fragmentados frisos expresando,
ante todo, un horror al vacío. En costante metamorfosis - como en un sueño o
una pesadilla- se hibridan fantásticas cabezas, cuerpos o cuerpos alados (que
por lo general recuerdan relevantes figuras de nuestra historia)con fragmentos
de molduras, decorados, garras, extrañas aves, objetos de tocador y un sinnúmero
más de detalles. Las figuras, a veces montadas en caballos mutilados, ellas
mismas mutiladas (llevan charreteras) aparecen ridículamente solemnaes, como
iniciando una epopeya o ejecutando un gesto esencial, sin percatarse de que
todo, desde su espada o su cuerpo hasta el más mínimo detalle, están en plena
transformación. Este universo desmesurado, demoníaco- que tanto nos recuerda
a la Edad Media- si bien es el producto de una febril imaginación, no deja de
ser una denuncia, acertadas metáforas de la historia de un desgarramiento. Y
si el Gótico- para aquél que conocía sus claves- era el herético relato de lo
fantástico, las obsesivas y fantasmagóricas hibridaciones de Norberto Gómez,
son una constante burla a lo empírico, el testimonio de una crispación : objetivar
a toda costa el desmesurado mundo de acumulaciones que lo habitan, seguir desnudando
con metáforas justas las desmesuras y condiciones del tiempo que vivimos para
marcar - parafraseando a Adorno- las estaciones donde se detuvo la esperanza.
Casting
for eternity
Edward Shaw
BUENOS AIRES HERALD October
14, 1990
Ruth Benzacar for the second year running has put on the best show of an Argentine
artist. Last year it was Luis Felipe Noe's extravaganza of painting that swept
over the edges of his canvass, often onto the backs of them. This year, in the
handsomely renovated space at 1000 Florida St. Benzacar is showing three years
of the production of Norberto Gomez.
A grat show is more than the sum of its individual components. In a more attentive
analysis of the individual works in both the Gómez and Noe shows, the original
enthusiasm generated by an overal vision may be tempered, and another set of
criteria como into play.But in both cases, the spectator has been offered the
infrequent opportunity to feast his eyes on a spring-like explosion of artistic
creativity.
Each of Gómez' creations in itself is a technical tour de force. The viewer
gets the eerie feeling that these last three years Benzacar had been planning
her restructuring of the gallery for Gómez' show and that Gómez somehow planned
each of this perturbing sculptures for the precise spot that it nows sits in
the gallery. Numerologists might suggest that the significance of this, Benzacar's
fifth exhibit in her 25th year as a dealer, contributes to the magic of the
moment.
Man and this myths, his monsters and his implements populate these totems elevated
to a cross section of humanity's anecdotal actions, captured and cast in plaster
by the artist. Gómez has made his infrequent but categorical appearances in
galleries since 1967. He is an artist's artist, one of those rare phenomenons
in any society, who in certain difficult- to- define ways keeps alive the flame
of valid artistic expression, of an individual's integrity to himself, to his
craft and to his community.
Gómez is a man with a personal vision of time. While others rut about in the
art world, worrying about their image, price, popularity and succes, Gómez dedicates
his energies to his relationship with time. Time for Gómez is a precious commodity
that can give him the freedom that neither money nor fame can. In his painstaking
vocation of sculpting in plaster, time is essential. Each of his creations demand
dozens of long days'devotion.
His hands must move with a caution in their constant contact with his material,
which he points out is nothing more than plaster and water, the same elements
utilized in making mouldings on walls, Gómez is conscious of the inherent nothingness
of art and at the same time its transcendental capacity to convey what a man
can transmit in a certain lucid instant of his complex and ever-changing consciousness.
It was Gómez' hands themselves that led to this apparently abrupt change in
the artist's visual message. After years of containing his message in more abstract
forms, of anatomic curves and visceral loops, Gómez cast his hands in stark
chalk-like plaster. Four hands formed to enclose a space. But Gómez knows that
even his hands cannot enclose anything for long, and that is precisely the transitoriness
of everything that makes art the fascinating exercise that it is, especially
when the results surpass the commonplace.
Gómez spent three years confined to his sudio facing Parque Lezama. A man who
is at ease with himself, an artist who knows how to squeeze the energy out of
his anguish so that the pain is productive, Gómez thrives on the solitude of
his studio. When a curator came from Paris to visit him, his was able to convince
her that he was, at the centre of his universe, where he could be as creative
and as productive as any artist couldt be anywhere else on this planet.
Gómez moulds his pieces in "plastilina", then casts them and recycles the artificial
clay. Once he has cast a rough plaster block, with extremely sharp tools, he
carves out the final version of the figure he is seeking. If necessary he adds
segments to the sculpture. Each figure seems to lead to the next and contain
interacting facets.
Gómez does not make any sketches prior to pouring his fingers into the volatile
mass of modeling clay. The messages his hands emit are not those that his mind
would propel onto paper. The hands, left to devise their own strategies, perform
their rites in additional dimensions, and it is there on the brink of a fourth
dimension that the essential Gómez stamps his substance into a lump of plaster
and water, which, if all goes well, will be imbued with the taste of eternity.
If you only go to one art show this spring, try this one!
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