Gerardo Goldwasser

At the beginning of the seventies, the countries of the Rio de la Plata were going through a decisive moment of political violence, with democracy breaking down, the fabric of society being torn apart, and the consequent dismantling of culture as an institutional structure.

In the years following the dictatorial period, no programmatic controversy is observed among the Uruguayan artists. If any involuntary coincidence appeared at all, this was, precisely, in the individualist lack of aggregation with which this new stage was being approached.

This fact is a strong feature of the post-dictatorial period. The loss of common referents from the previous period and the abrupt awareness of a state of diversification, pluralization and cultural entropy, led to the reassessment of the individual options, the small isolated gestures, the peculiar and unrepeatable micro-universe of the personal history, as conscious foundations for “making art”.

The artist’s autobiographical quotation in his own work paradoxically becomes a ritual for social insertion that assigns a new value to memory and to individual experience, reestablishing the frontiers between that which is public and private in art.

Goldwasser sets out from a family obsession, that of the tailor’s trade, and projects it over one of the most problematic social obsessions: namely the corporeal realization of identity (the mask and the suit) within the framework of physical and moral coercion that is applied to the freedom of the bodies.

Although in his most recent work he operates with the matrix-rationale of the tailor’s pattern, seeking detachment from the problems posed by the body as such, it is important to highlight the conceptual affiliation that, at the origin of that work, links the body and the representation thereof, the existential reason and the apparential reason.

Both reasons are also united by a family history narrating the survival of his Jewish grandfather in Hitler’s Germany (a more than existential reason), thanks to the services he rendered as a tailor at the Nazi military court (Pretorian uniforms continued to be the apparential reason of German militarism).

Goldwasser potentiates this background, and depicts through the allegory of the family body (the photographic images are those of his uncle, an immigrant and tailor who settled in Uruguay during the forties) the victimized body of Uruguayan society in the times of the dictatorship (the suit is resonant of a “tailor-made” undifferentiated model, like a prison).

The “tailor’s table” – a plane upon which the tailor’s patterns are placed constitutes Goldwasser’s installational matrix – and acts as a kind of blind spot for every representation. It is the place where the patterns are arranged, that is to say, where the syntactic possibilities for “molding” are latent, but as yet devoid of discursive intentionality, devoid as yet of its representational model.

However, these “tables” have uncontainable references to the Lacanian “body in pieces”; an illegible, virtual body, which is so much sought for not only by the assembling dexterity of the tailor’s basting thread, but also by the archaeologist’s taxonomic patience.

Gabriel Peluffo Linari

Director of the Juan Manuel Blanes Museum

Curator

Gerardo Goldwasser (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1961). Short Curriculum.

He studied at the Artistic Expression Center directed by Nelson Ramos (1984-1988). Studies of Metal Engraving course by Prof. David Finkbeiner (Purchase, New York University Professor, and Manhattan Graphics) given at the National Museum of Visual Arts in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Last most important exhibitions

“51 Anniversary prize”, The National Museum of Visual Arts in Montevideo, Uruguay (2004);

“To the fly” 2nd part. Univint Foundation / Cultural Center Montevideo, Uruguay (2003);

“Carpe Diem III”, Univint Foundation / Cultural Center Montevideo, Uruguay (2003);

”El Viaje...The Journey: 18 Latin American Jewish artists and poets, The Jewish Museum of Florida, Miami, USA (2002);

Homage to Akira Kurosawa, City council of Montevideo Gallery, Montevideo, Uruguay (2001);

“ArteBA 2000”, International Contemporary Art Fair, 2nd. Mercosur Biennial of Print, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2000);

“ARCO 2000”, International Contemporary Art Fair, Sur Galery, Cutting

Edge Space, Madrid, España (2000)

"Gerardo Goldwasser", Cultural Center Casa Mojana, ICI, Montevideo, Uruguay (2000);

”El Viaje...The Journey” Museum of Contemporary Art, Sofía Imbert, Caracas, Venezuela (1999)

Represents Uruguay at the Contemporary art Biennials

I Biennial of Mercosur, Porto Alegre, Brazil (1997);

VI Biennial of La Havana, Cuba (1997);

IX International Biennial of Cuenca, Ecuador (2007).

Awards and Fellowships

1st.Prize, 51 aniversary / 51 National Room of Arts, National Museum of Visual Arts in Montevideo (2004)

1st.Prize, 50 aniversary / 50 National Room of Arts, National Museum of Visual Arts in Montevideo (2002)

Obtain The Pollock-krasner Foundation grant, New York, (2001)

2nd. Prize of print, ArteBA 2000 Fair given by National Fonds for the Arts at the 2nd. Mercosur Biennial

of Prints - Buenos Aires, Argentina (2000)

1st. Prize given by the City Council at the Montevideo Council Award (1999)

Paul Cezzane Award, 1st. Prize given by French Embassy. Fellowship for six month to France (Residence) Paris and Nantes, given by the Regional Fonds of Contemporary Art. (1994)

1st. PrizeVisual Art Meeting / USA-Uruguay Cultural Alliance “Bienarte III” in Montevideo. Fellowship, Travel to New York and program with USIA International Visitor Program Educational and Cultural Affairs. (1990-91)

1st. Prize, 1st. Comics International meeting of Badalona, Spain, 1st. Prize (1988)