The idiot, 1989

He exhibits his plaster works at a one-man show at the Ruth Benzacar gallery. His “Self-portrait with hands” from 1987 is once again shown here. The rest of his sculptures, mainly frontal views in polychrome and oil painting, develop a fantastic imagery of grotesque animal figure, part horse, part bird of prey and part human, which sometimes have mutilations ending in prosthetic limbs in the form of wheels or wooden mechanisms. These figures –both perverse and ridiculous– blend into fragments of an eclectic, ornamented architecture which is characteristic of the Buenos Aires buildings of the early 20th century. Such compositions include, in unexpected combinations, emblems of power, glory or excessive passion, which are contradicted by the grotesque attitude of the figures who bear them – figures possessed of elements of delirium, stolidity and evil.

The critic Jorge López Ayala has noted about these sculptures that “Gómez has found in his mannerist romanticism, which like other ‘manners’ shows in different artistic media, an apt vehicle