Art

Inside the “Spring Moments” exhibition: How Israeli artist David Gerstein invented a language of his own

by Karishma Tulsidas
Photography by Jin Cheng Wong

Shot on location at Bruno Gallery.

Standing 18m tall—a number that represents life in Jewish tradition—Momentum by David Gerstein has been a fixture of the Singapore CBD since 2007. Having seen it countless times, I was unaware of its symbolism until I met the man himself at his latest exhibition at Bruno Gallery: “The colours represent different cultures in Singapore. And the structure itself starts very large at the base, so everybody has the chance to climb. It represents a society striving. Some people go up, some people go down—just like in life.”

At 81, Gerstein remains one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary sculpture, and one of the first artists to pioneer laser-cut metal as a three-dimensional art form. The technique, he says, grew out of a restlessness with painting. “I felt I needed something more—a language of my own. Painting is always flat, so I thought: how can I enlarge the horizon? I started experimenting with cutouts, and it gave me the idea of a painting with 360 degrees, visible from all sides.”

David Gerstein with Rose Lotus, original acrylic on canvas. Top: Inside the exhibition at Bruno Gallery, with original paintings on canvas Rose Lotus and View, as well as a photograph of the hand-painted, laser-cut steel sculpture Momentum.

The works on show at Bruno Gallery are a vivid demonstration of that philosophy. Colour is everywhere. “It’s intuition,” he says. “There are no rules. I get inspired by what I see, and that inspires the colours.”

Almost 35 years into his practice, Gerstein has forged something close to a genre of his own: pop art made three-dimensional, familiar subjects rendered in a visual language that is entirely his. “I invent all the time,” he says. “I make experiments and sometimes I don’t know what will come out. I just let it happen.”