Fernando
Gelman

Fernando Gelman is a self-taught artist whose practice emerges after a long trajectory as an entrepreneur and project developer. He began his artistic journey at the age of 57, a pivotal moment that reshaped his relationship with material, time, and introspection. Personal experience and fatherhood form the emotional core of his work.

Working with mixed media and everyday materials—such as expanded polystyrene, pins, rubber, and nails—Gelman develops restrained, sensorial compositions that explore the coexistence of opposites: fragility and strength, attraction and discomfort, delicacy and tension.

Process is central to his practice. Embracing error, fracture, and loss of control, he allows materials to retain their own memory and internal tension. His work invites intimate, reflective encounters, encouraging viewers to inhabit emotional ambiguity rather than seek resolution.

He lives and works in Santiago, Chile.