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Once in a while, during the
natural flow of life, we find ourselves taking part in someone else's
moment of glory.
David Gerstein belongs to a group of painters, all top craftsmen,
whom you come across, and whose expanding body of work - increasingly
filling the country - is worthy of close scrutiny.
It is difficult to think of another artist like David Gerstein,
whose work in recent years has gained such prominence on the local
scene: his pieces are regularly exhibited at the Rosenfeld Gallery
in the heart of Dizengoff, one of Tel Aviv's main streets; reproductions
of his works have been published in all Israeli newspapers; some
of his works have been chosen to appear on huge billboards, as human
and aesthetic images that aim to catch the eye and engage the heart,
and to promote companies like Isracard and the First International
Bank; his monumental statues adorn Israeli cities; a playground
of his invention continues to delight the children of Jerusalem;
the Hebrew University ordered an ambitious and challenging project
from Gerstein: the design of various statues which will symbolize
- based on criteria of good taste, common sense and a high level
of communication - the various University institutions and faculties;
a television show has chosen to decorate its broadcasting studio
with his works, in the hope that the pieces' tremendous popularity
will attract viewers to the show; some of his paintings hang in
the Israel Museum's collection and the Children's Wing of the museum
exhibits his statues; and many more.
The range of circumstances, both artistic and popular, under which
the Israeli public has been exposed to Gerstein's work in the past
years, i.e. the statues and cut-outs, as well as his overflowing
presence, speak of the community's deep need for this type of creation:
The work of a virtuoso artist, who is neither theoretical nor topical
in the publicist, period-related sense, but "simply an artist" in
the superb sense of the word. A painter who has fine-tuned the technique,
temperament, shapes, images and coloring which are identified with
him: a painter who produces simple, charming, Matisse-like decorative
objects, using his unique inventive technique and employing a Fauve-like
coloring and sensuality. Good-hearted objects that convey a certain
irony and humor towards "Israeliness", which grows more and more
convoluted and yet for him, at least, remains simple and innocent,
as it was during his childhood in the 50's. Perhaps not so different
than the Israeliness experienced by the first generation of the
Land of Israel painters, i.e. Nahum Gutman and Reuben Rubin.
Gerstein, a self-confident painter, gazes with a semi-ironic smile
at our fervor-ridden reality. As though everything around him were
merely atoms engaged in a mad race, which in itself generates reality,
and if not for that race everything would plunge into black holes
or madhouses. Reality as a pointless race is the subject of several
of his works, such as: "Marathon" and "The Great Marathon".
In 1970, after ten years of study in Jerusalem, Paris and New York,
Gerstein began exhibiting his literary-figurative paintings, which
depicted autobiographical scenes, the Tel Aviv balcony scene, as
well as home, mood and atmosphere pictures that were engraved on
his mind. The seventies were critical years on the Israeli and international
art scene. The art establishment adopted Minimalism and Conceptualism,
which were created by artists of Gerstein's generation. But Gerstein
resolutely refused to join the hegemonic stream, and against all
odds offered literary paintings, replete with expression and bound
to the perception of art as object.
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