MONTERREY.- The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey presents the exhibition Gerda Gruber: Entre verde y agua (Between Green and Water), the most comprehensive retrospective to date of the artist, who is regarded as a leading figure in contemporary sculpture in Mexico.

Born in 1940 in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, Gruber arrived in Mexico in 1975. Over the past 50 years, she has worked tirelessly on her artistic career while also dedicating herself to teaching, training several generations of students, including artists such as Miriam Medrez and Javier Marín.

The artist lived in Mexico City between 1975 and 1988. During that time, in 1976, she founded the Clay Sculpture Workshop at what was then the Academia de San Carlos, where she taught. In 1977, she made her first trip to Nuevo León, where she visited. She stayed intermittently for 20 years, establishing collaborations with companies in the region such as Cerámica Regiomontana, Aceros Monterrey, and Vitro. These partnerships allowed her to explore new materials in an industrial environment.

At the same time, the artist began working with clay, inspired by her interest in pre-Hispanic cultures, and encouraged her students to do the same. Her constant curiosity and desire to explore new horizons later led her to Yucatán, where she has worked with wood and other organic materials, and where she has lived since the late 1980s.

Curated by Daniela Pérez, the exhibition contextualizes the artist and her work, delving into her research on cycles of natural transformation and the evolution of sculpture, which recognizes intelligence in the form of seeds as a refuge and source of life. The selection includes 113 works created since her arrival in Mexico; the earliest date from the mid-1970s, others from the 1980s, and the majority from the 1990s to the present.

“Gerda's concern for plant life has led her to develop a unique interpretation through her artistic imagination, inspired by the layer of structures and protection she marvels at recognizing in seeds, shadows, wind, plants, light, nests, water, movement, plants, and even in the tradition that stem from ancient knowledge", says Daniela Pérez, curator of the exhibition.

“With her intuitive approach, we celebrate today the relevance of a body of work that, over time, has remained faithful while always seeking greater depth, in the face of the sculptural explorations of shelters that are inevitably rooted in the earth”.

Throughout the four rooms on the main floor where the exhibition is displayed, the works are arranged not in chronological or thematic order, but according to the material and discursive connections between them. Since the works come from different periods, materials, and narratives, the curatorial decision was to integrate them around certain recurring aspects in Gruber’s practice, allowing them to coexist regardless of the period in which they were created:

● The possible relationships between materials: The artist is interested in breaking away from conventions and opening herself to experimentation with different materials, which she sees as a way of finding scattered fragments of herself in her surroundings—particularly in nature, with its complex life cycles.

● Her various investigations and processes: Owing to the scale of the exhibition space and the scope of this retrospective, for the first time, it is possible to see both the artist’s creative process and her diverse interests in artistic research, which she has pursued for many years. Curator Daniela Pérez notes that the artist is drawn to “the study of the regenerative energy of nature, cycles, transformation, processes, existence, and life”.

The exhibition is part of MARCO’s ongoing effort to highlight the work of artists whose careers have had a significant impact both nationally and internationally. With the Gerda Gruber exhibition, the museum—through its inter-institutional collaboration with the MAM—makes a historic contribution to the art of Mexico and Nuevo León by reviewing and analyzing the work of an artist who has influenced contemporary art through both her artistic production and her commitment to artistic education.

WALKTHROUGH OF GALLERIES

The Gerda Gruber exhibition also features interventions by the artist, previously unseen pieces, and sculptures presented as installations, reflecting her interest in exploring and contemplating nature from multiple perspectives.

At the beginning of the exhibition, visitors encounter a line of seeds inserted into the wall, conceived as a temporary appropriation of the museum space. Her small-format porcelain and ceramic sculptures are displayed together on a large platform, while her large-format works are distributed throughout the galleries. In addition, a video projection presents the artist and her creative process. The wooden sculptures evoke the forest, crafted from fruit trees such as avocado, tamarind, and sapote, among others.

In the first room, a photo mural depicts one of the artist’s earliest site-specific outdoor works, created in Monterrey in 1996. Although untitled, it is colloquially known as Conuco. Among her more recent works is Navegar hacia… (2020–2022), a canoe made of bamboo, cloth, and 700 clay pieces, created as a tribute to those who died during the COVID-19 pandemic in Yucatán.

Seeds have become one of the most significant elements in her work, and the second room brings together projects related to this theme. One is Campo magnético (Magnetic Field), an intervention in a public school in Yucatán documented through photography. Noticing that the students had no vegetation in their recreational area, the artist designed a circular space and planted neem trees within it. Another project is the research initiative Catálogo de semillas (Seed Catalog), inspired by NASA’s theory that climate change will cause sea levels to rise, potentially submerging parts of Yucatán. This project includes the sculpture series Contenedores de semillas (Seed Containers). At the close of the exhibition at MARCO, one of these containers will be filled with seeds from Yucatán species and buried as a time capsule.

The third room features sculptures created through processes more closely related to assembly, weaving, and joining, evoking forms reminiscent of natural cocoons. The series Semillas de jabim I, II, and III (2024), along with Estructura de semilla de jabim I–III (2024–25) and Capullo (2023), are suspended from the ceiling by fabric that connects them.

The fourth and final room brings together, among other works, sculptures in clay—one of the most significant materials in the artist’s practice. It also includes sculptures in wood and felt, one of the most recent materials the artist has explored as part of her relentless experimentation.