Michael Gitlin\u2019s work pulsates with an internal dynamic that recreates itself each time anew. We can say that Gitlin offers an artistic commitment to some fundamental questions which have been preoccupying him for years \u2013 line, volume, object, wall, floor, viewer \u2013 while stubbornly turning his back on artistic fashions. His work draws on the spirit of American Minimalism, adhering to principles of leanness and formal reduction. At the same time Gitlin is identified \u2013 like other Israeli artists who worked in New York in the 70s \u2013 with the Post-Minimalist trend that started to emerge into prominence in those years. This generation of artists sought to widen the range of artistic possibilities and challenged the strict rules of Minimalism, which yielded industrial-looking and neatly polished objects. They preferred using simple materials such as paper, plywood and wood, and externalizing the artist\u2019s handprint. Against this background, Gitlin\u2019s energetic work is characterized by a range of basic actions \u2013 tearing, breaking, cutting, displacing and splicing \u2013 which are embodied in the material and which confront the viewer as part of the tendency to expose the working process. Gitlin\u2019s violent gestures, like his use of axe strokes as both sculpting and drawing tool, go back to the tradition of Modernism and draw their energy from the American Abstract Expressionism of the 40s and 50s, while creating tension between immobility and quietness on the one hand, and a movement carried out by the viewer on the other.
\nThe exhibition travels from the past to the present, from drawing and two dimensions to sculpture and three dimensions, from the linear to the lumpy and from the sensory to the conceptual, in an attempt to assemble Gitlin\u2019s myriad procedures and concepts and create an \u201cimage bank\u201d from an archive in danger of being forgotten. It includes sculptural installations and works on paper from three broad bodies of work, which serve to illustrate the development of Gitlin\u2019s art over more than four decades. In recent years Gitlin has been expanding his range of materials, and his works have been characterized by a physical lightness not evident in them in the past. At the same time, over the years his body of work has reflected the wish to go beyond the material object and even approach the spiritual in art. It is a wish devoid of pathos, even ironical, but always committed and sincere.<\/p>\n