For those who wonder what is happening around art in the Yucatan Peninsula, it is necessary that they know the work that the sculptor Gerda Gruber does in the City of Mérida. From the Gerda Gruber Jez Foundation, installed in Cholul, and the Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán, her work has been fundamental in the development of the arts in the State of Yucatán; both for her own sculptural production and for her teaching work.
It is important to highlight that this last point does not refer to a teaching job confined to the classroom or workshop, but to her work as a teacher in the full sense of the word, transcending the spaces and times of the institutions, awakening interests, channeling enthusiasms, correcting the smallest details, accompanying long creative processes, revealing the tricks of the materials with passion, joy and generosity.
Gerda Gruber has welcomed creators of all generations into her foundation, however the synergy she established with the young artists who for a decade have been producing alongside her, shoulder to shoulder, as colleagues, is unique and extremely beneficial for the art scene of our region. She has managed to generate a community of creators who are dedicated to research, production and management with successful individual and collective results.
A glimpse of the most recent was the exhibition “El espacio somos nosotros” mounted in the Pasaje de la Revolución by the Fernando García Ponce Museum - MACAY, an exhibition derived from a critique of the urban territory rooted in the history and sociology of space. The exhibition, financed entirely by the creators themselves, tested the limits of the concessions that define artistic practice in public spaces while offering a twist to the way of moving through the place. Some of the artists who participated and make up the community created around the Cholul workshop are: Eugenio Encarnación, Edgar Canul, José Fernández Levy, Milagros Lara, Rafiki Sánchez, José Hernández Luna and Gabriel Niquete.
One year after receiving the Yucatán Medal for her contribution to the field of arts in the State, she is fully active organizing artistic research tours through the territories of our State, championing projects that have erased limits with science, anthropology and, to a certain extent, ecological activism. Just as the natural environment and its conservation has been one of the lines that has crossed its production in recent years, so the collective projects it promotes come from making artistic practice, in conjunction with different knowledge, a platform to rethink and act in the world.
Her imprint on local art since her production has also been fundamental in the field of sculpture. On the one hand, she is one of the few artists who, through research, has built a very extensive body of work in which the materials and rhythms of endemic nature are present. The relationship of her work with the Yucatecan habitat is one of its main characteristics and this has influenced multiple local authors as well as numerous generations of ESAY. Its production, over time, has allowed us to approach nature in a different way: to understand it in order to protect it.
On the other hand, Gerda is a sculpture of long craft; Its technical purification, its volumetric design and its formal solutions articulate a body of work without ups and downs despite the experimentation and constant search, both formal and material. And this has also been decisive in making it one of the most notable influences in the region.
Her contributions are not purely local, at a national and international level her artistic work is recognized and valued especially in the field of ceramics and glass sculpture. A retrospective exploration, which integrates multiple stages as well as contemporary revisions of the artist's previous projects within the framework of an exhibition and editorial publication, is a pending issue in the field of visual arts in Yucatan.
June, 2019.
"Chained Torso" by Gerda Gruber.
"Yuya's nest" by Gerda Gruber