Gego

Before immigrating to Venezuela in 1939 and turning to sculpture, Gego—who was born Gertrude Goldschmidt in 1912 and passed in 1994—was trained as an architect in Hamburg. However, sculpture may not be the best term to describe her work in this touring retrospective, as it seems closer to three-dimensional drawing. Like Fred Sandback defining planes with string, Gego articulates volume through line with airy, crystalline wire constructions. Her objects reflect both the structure and the sense of spatial articulation that one finds in architectural drawing and in the practice itself.

Hanging like traps or nests in the main gallery are a constellation of these spidery orbs. Also on display are works on paper dating between 1961 and 1990. Several suggest a folded grid or matrix in flux, such as Tejedura 89/13 (Weaving 89/13), 1989, an ink drawing of a linear weave with collaged squares. Like the cellular quality of her sculptures, the drawings delineate space and evoke an underlying grid—another sign of mapping space. That said, despite the rectilinear nature of both grid and cells, the resulting forms emphasize a more organic intuitive process. The complete phrase from which the exhibition’s title is taken reads “Line as object to play with,” and these constructions certainly remind us that a spirit of play is key to artmaking.