David Gerstein makes art that is unintimidating. He has stuck to that principle with enough conviction that the art world came around to it. His subjects are everyday: cyclists, butterflies, musicians, a crowd on a busy street. They are treated as more than worthy of ambitious, large-scale sculpture.
Each work is laser-cut from steel or aluminium, hand-painted in layer after layer of colour, then assembled into several overlapping planes that give real depth and movement rather than a painted illusion of it. The pieces change as you approach, bold and graphic from across a room, surprisingly intricate up close.
Gerstein trained at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and St Martin's in London. He has completed close to fifty public commissions in Israel alone, with major installations in Singapore, New York, London, Seoul and Bangkok, and collectors that include Lance Armstrong.
