Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt)

"Free man, you will always cherish the sea! The sea is your mirror; you contemplate your soul in the infinite unrolling of its billows; Your mind is an abyss that is no less bitter."

Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil.

Gego or Gertrud Goldschmidt, the artist, and her exhibition is on view at Guggenheim Museum. The name of the exhibit is Gego, Measuring Infinity. How do you attempt to measure something that is beyond visual? The forces that govern the universe. Transparency, light and shadow, fragility. What we are looking at are drawings in space. Seeing the exhibit was

almost a religious experience. The feeling that I had entered the sacred space, the temple, this feeling did not escape me. Air, Water, submerged. "To look is to arrest the world to save it from

drowning."

Air and Water are two elements that connect the spirit with the magical force, which is beyond the visual. Transparent, fragile, delicate, infinite. The force of being a woman, who is a creator in its true sense, and yet, she is always destined to experience the metamorphoses of being free by creative power and being imprisoned at the same time by the social norms and expectations from society, family, and history.

Think of the element of Water. Think of the ocean. The ocean does not disappear and then reappear. Water is infinity. It is the constant change of the cosmos, constantly changing but always the same. The sea is always there. The sea is eternal. Mystical experience comes first from our emotions and always becomes the gates to the unknown, the realm of our imagination. There is nothing more abstract than reality.

Air is the world of the unseen, as I witness Geco's sculptures made of wire, drawings in the air. It is spreading out, dissolving, and transforming in the moment of constant change and celebrating the beauty of being alive as much as we celebrate this moment, when we witness the sunset or the sunrise.

Water represents emotions, constantly transformed by any condition, yet never in balance. You can disturb it easily. I thought about the element of water as being a source of life. The only thing we need to live. Water represents a connection to another world, the world of the unseen, just like air. Gego's sculptures are spiritual and abstract. What I witnessed at the museum elevated my spirit between states of my consciousness. The connection with the past. Beyond the invisible, which is the aim of memory: conscious and unconscious simultaneously.

The element of water can dissolve everything in time: the past, the present, and the future, and yet correlates with all the memories which only a woman can transform into something infinite. Through birth, emotional connection with children, and whispering fairytales at night.

What I witness is beyond visible, and I will continue staring and writing on Gego.