In this essay, Bruno Bosteels, a Belgian professor of Romance languages and literature, analyzes Gego’s art, focusing particularly on her environmental work, Reticulárea (1969). Bosteels grounds his analysis on the work of scholars from a number of disciplines: Louis Hjelmslev’s glossematics, Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistics, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophy, and others. On the basis of theories about structure in these disciplines, Bosteels analyzes Gego’s reticular system as a language with a structure of its own. In accordance with the notion of “diagram,” Bosteels views Gego’s Reticulárea as an event—in which the viewer plays an active part—that can be grasped and experienced on the basis of the notion of rhizome, as opposed to other works by Gego, which according to Bosteels, are diagrams in the sense of a synthetic rendering of something figurative. An example of this other sort of work would be Perro invisible [Invisible Dog] (1965), a work that unfortunately no longer exists. Bosteels notes the fact that Reticulárea was produced in the late sixties, at the height of structuralism, which would be followed by poststructuralist theories relevant to analyzing Gego’s work. He also indicates the connection between poststructuralist theory and the ancient atomic materialism of Democritus and Lucretius.

In 1996, work by Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt, 1912–1994), a Venezuelan artist of German origin, was presented at the São Paulo Biennial, where it earned the admiration of international curators, critics, and museum directors. In November 2000, a major exhibition entitled Gego. 1955–1990 opened at the Museo de Bellas Artes of Caracas. Curated by museologist and researcher Iris Peruga, the show was visited by important scholars from around the world, leading to solo exhibitions of Gego’s work in the United States, Europe, and other Latin American countries. In the framework of these exhibitions, scholars from Venezuela and elsewhere produced a rich body of historiography on Gego and her work. Indeed, experts from an array of fields (architecture, philosophy, linguistics, semiology, biology, and mathematics), not just the visual arts, took an interest in Gego’s work. It was in that context—and in conjunction with the exhibition Thinking the Line: Gego, 1957–1998, (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006)—that this essay by Bruno Botlees (born 1967), a professor of literature and a researcher in philosophy and the visual arts, was published. Bosteel’s extensive essay constitutes an important interdisciplinary study of Gego’s reticular structures. Rich in original ideas, the essay’s thesis is based on the theories of postmodern thinkers who question the boundaries between art and science, author and viewer, and space and time. Bosteel argues that the Danish linguist and glossematician Louis Hjelmslev’s concept of mening or “substance”—that which is at once “matter and meaning” or “matter and sense”—as well as the work of other linguists, and French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theories of the rhizome are particularly pertinent.This essay consists of ten sections: Threshold, Predicament, Modernity, Diagram, Rhizome, Immanence, Discipline or Control?, Animal or Number?, Fold or Clinamen?, and Subject or Suture?A fragment of this essay (original in English, Spanish translation by Sabina Israelaitz in 2010) was selected for publication in the bilingual book Desenredando la red. La Reticulárea de Gego. Una antología de respuestas críticas / Untangling the Web: Gego’s Reticulárea, An Anthology of Critical Response, organized by María Elena Huizi and Ester Crespin, currently in the process of being published by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Fundación Gego, Caracas.