Transcend/Transport: Paintings 1965–1976
Galerie Lelong
January 8–February 14, 2026
New York
At Galerie Lelong we see paintings begun after Elda Cerrato (b. 1930, d. 2023) returned to Argentina in 1964 from Venezuela. While there, she had studied George Ivanovich Gurdjieff’s (b. 1866, d. 1949) “Fourth Way” esoteric teachings.
Mineralización y Revitalización de Una a Otra Dimensión (Serie Entes Extraños. Epopeya del Ser Beta) (1968) is one example of her painterly projections of invisible energetic, cosmological, and spiritual forces. Her life and work moved between two poles: the political and the other-dimensional quest for higher states of consciousness. In Geohistoriografía: La dominación (Serie Geo-historiografía) (1975) and Pasa lo mismo en el movimiento que en el mapa? (1976), Latin American countries are placed within the outlines of the US map. With our current Yankee invasion of Venezuela, and Trump’s Rough Riders about to retake Cuba’s San Juan Hill, her works are both timely and prophetic. Also, we are currently seeing a renewed interest in the teachings of Gurdjieff through the writings of P. D. Ouspensky (b. 1878, d. 1947) and others mapping paths to higher states of consciousness; quantum energies are certainly a field of interest today. Sadly, these journeys of the soul have been excluded from the discourse in institutions centered around art and politics. Because her works bridge the worlds of science, politics, and spirituality, they feel both contemporary and part of the zeitgeist.
In Gurdjieff’s system, where humans are referred to as “three-brained beings,” “Beta Beings” refer roughly to a state in which beta brainwave frequencies are related to higher consciousness. Beta waves have long been associated with greater cognition. The artist’s Gurdjieff studies and several extraterrestrial sightings around 1964 led to her most memorable “cosmovision” works. Seeing her paintings, I could not help thinking of the spiritual branch of Russian cosmism where science, esoteric ideas about cosmic energies, self-transformation, and space exploration came together. Nikolai Fyodorov (b. 1829, d. 1903), Cosmism’s founder, would have loved her work!
“Serie Entes Extraños. Epopeya del Ser Beta” (1960) takes the viewer into Cerrato’s unique territory. She does not fit neatly into categories of Latin American Surrealism despite her ties to the Caracas avant-garde collective El Techo de la Ballena [The Roof of the Whale], which practiced a politicized strand of Surrealism, although their influence is felt in her later political works. Cerrato practiced Surrealist automatism, which lifted her use of biological forms beyond the literal examples she encountered in her university studies in biochemistry. To lump her paintings under the heading of biomorphic abstraction misses the point. For this reviewer, the works in her “Beta Beings” series are her masterpieces.
In Mineralización y Revitalización de Una a Otra Dimensión (Serie Entes Extraños. Epopeya del Ser Beta) (1968), a white ovoid-form takes on a cosmogonic role. It feels like a diagram of the birth of a new cosmic universe. The diagram on the left side of the black background resembles a cranium and a lightbulb absorbing cosmic rays. The masterpiece of the exhibition is a two-sided work standing in the middle of the floor, Redundancia en las experiencias relativas al Okidanokh. Faz 1. Acumulación energética presente. Faz 2. Acumulación energética ausente. (Serie Producción de energía. Redundancia en las experiencias relativas al Okidanokh) (1967). The dark ovoid on one side and the light ovoid on the reverse side act as a kind of yin yang, a cosmic dualism. This is the work that transports the viewer into the higher dimensions Gurdjieff prophesized!