Michael Gitlin: Material Matters

Lines, shapes, and volumes populate the work of Michael Gitlin like protagonists of a story with no narrative, no theme, and no time. It is the story of the shapes themselves and the spaces between them; a syntax of sculptural “words” and “sentences,” whose form is their meaning. More importantly: the process is the work, and the work is the process.

This intimate exhibition features a selection of works from Michael Gitlin’s career spanning five decades. Gitlin, born in 1943, was affiliated in the early 1970s with conceptual artists who sought to create a new kind of art that would subvert earlier conventions and principles. His early endeavors gave birth to a hybrid type of work in which the two- and three-dimensional meet, and the revealed and hidden merge. In them, the heart of the creative act lies exposed.

Over the years, the forms in his works changed from hard and jagged to light, amorphous shapes seemingly floating on the wall surface. In recent years Gitlin returned to harder materials in stark colors, which seem to coat a concealed essence.

Like an alchemist reaching for the “philosopher’s stone” through a perpetual examination of material variations, Gitlin investigates the boundaries of matter and the infinite ability of basic forms to express spiritual meaning. In this process he brings the work back to its primal components – the very elements that comprise the language of art.