Because
in all their rigidity they are alive.....
You can't go past
Liz Gehrers sculptures without noticing them.
I nearly would
have succeeded when I first came across them in the studio of the Gehrer
house in Tuscany, Italy. I was once again on a visit and had expressed
the wish to be allowed to see some pieces of Liz Gehrers work. I was
curious.
I knew the sophisticated
sense of beauty and perfection, which the outside and inside of the
Gehrer country home in Montepulciano seems to breathe, on a par with
the hospitality of its inhabitants. I knew Liz Gehrer whose subdued
elegance rivals her natural charm when, certain of herself, briefly
and clearly she cuts in on the murmur of a conversation, puts in her
point of view next to that of her husband or settles a verbal quarrel
of her children with a smile and sense of humour.
I was therefore
not without prejudice about the artistic significance of her creative
work. "Who did this?", I had nearly asked, as her husband
pointed to a sculpture which at first sight seemed like a kind of metal
relief, bronze for example, but on closer examination turned out to
be a cardboard structure in which human silhouettes could be recognised.
I had expected graphically structured works of beauty and elegance,
works of aesthetic perfection and compositional austerity. Instead larger-than-life,
face- and limbless figures made of hardened cardboard or grey concrete.
The first-mentioned made for the inside, alone or in formation, the
latter preferably standing outside together in groups of two or three
and robbing the garden of its innocent charm.
My first inner
reaction was dismay, hit by a reality not defined for the time being,
thrown out of the course of daily routine, stumbling onto the path of
an inescapable reality. In the meantime I have had the chance to circle,
encircle, to approach Liz Gehrers works in silent dialogue: a pair of
figures, last summer found its way into the midst of the olive grove
in Celidonia.
I perceive: oversized,
overly slim human silhouettes, each one stiffly wrapped, walled in,
frozen. They have no face, no arms, no legs. They could be silent memorials
of modern terror and still don't let such thoughts crop up. Because
in all their stiffness they are alive, look at you and each other without
having eyes, step into a rhythmic relationship which can well become
a dance as you walk around them.
What do they represent
to me? They stand for the tragedy of the human existence which is only
conceivable in community, but can be lived solely in segregation. For
the distinctive ability of man to communicate in spite of the fact that
in life's dance, in the end he will always remain without face, voiceless
and untouchable, except perhaps for those rare moments in which the
ice melts, the armour cracks, the wrapping falls. For a time in which
we stand in the midst of the blossoming garden, mute and dull, without
sense of direction, without arms, helplessly dancing our lonely dance.
In those days
in Liz Gehrers studio I had drawn her attention to the very fine cracks
which could only be noticed on close examination of her first concrete
sculptures and said that it might be wise not to expose them to the
elements or at least to protect them by means of synthetic materials.
"No", she replied. "If they disintegrate in rain, cold
and ice then that's all right. I'm curious about what will happen to
them over the next years." Will they one day become similes of
human transience?
Paul O.Pfister,
Publicist, Chiusdino (Tuscany, Italy), January 1994
Paul O.Pfister
has published several books, i.a. "Lob der Angst" (1994),
"Die Rotonde von Montesiepi" (1999), "Geworden"
(2000) and "Furbi" (2001).