Claudia Gherstenfeld a escala humana, con zapatos objeto y ruedas, indica el andar de la vida.
Desde la acción de calzarse para partir, cuenta historias cotidianas que amalgama con materiales equivalentes.
Con mirada casi callejera y un dejo escenográfico, tiene la cualidad de mostrar al hombre en sus distintas facetas.
Gherstenfeld fue entrevistada para revista "Sculpture" de EEUU. y por Julio Sapollnik para Cultura al Día TV, entre otras notas y publicaciones.
Del mismo modo que en muestras anteriores fue acompañada por adherentes a su obra.
Sculpture Magazine March 09 - 2009
By Maria Carolina Baulo Claudia Gherstenfeld is an argentine young artist. She started painting, then she tried with ceramics, but her main concerns lately are related with sculptures and objects.This exhibition, where she presents her new production, is called “AVANTI”. The entire presentation is related with humans. Shoes, clothes, everything we wear speak for ourselves even if we don’t want to. The artist works with shoes, objects and wheels and its relation with the motion of life; shoes represent the constant activity people have, the never ending circle of moving forward. The exhibition’s name, an Italian expression, expresses the idea of a turning wheel, just like the unpredictable wheel of fortune. “AVANTI” also gives us permission to walk, to pass, to enter; it’s a friendly way of welcoming others. The idea of working with simple materials to give shape to those shoes that recreate so many different characters and individuals, is also related with the ordinary action of putting them on every day just to get started. Gherstenfeld wanted to show as many varieties of shoes as she could. The entire exhibition presents all types of alternatives for the spectator to easily find the correct option that suits with his/her personal story. Some sculptures look “tired”, other shoes look fancy and glamorous and some reveal the cruel or tender side of its owner; even the artist’s shoes are part of the exhibition, her real shoes left in one of the corners of the gallery the opening night of the show. And you can tell a lot of Gherstenfeld´s personality just by looking at those colorful high heels.The support, the materials the artist used, basically paper, glue, and paint - but combined with flowers, nails, wood and real heels and spike heels - are transformed in such a way that the small sculptures look so natural we could even feel attracted to reach them and try them. And I also see there’s an interesting analogy between those pieces and the titles the artist gave them. Simplicity seems to be an ideal she wants to achieve, the main concern she seeks, but the paradox is also present because every title is configured in a cryptic way, far from being easily accessible: the title could represent just capital letters like R.I.P (not much more than an R, an I and a P) that communicate us nothing in case we don’t know the meaning of those letters all together just separated by dots; but it could also refer to the appearance of the shoe-sculpture. We could make the exercise of trying to find out the concept within those unpronounceable words, we could also choose to create the meaning ourselves, or we can just let it go and assume it is part of an intimate pact between the artist and her art work. An original way that Claudia Gherstenfeld finds to relate what an appearance could sell and how words give names those appearances; not always the same thing. As she said: “as simple and as complex as life itself”.
http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag09/mar