Michael Gac Levin 'Pears with Baba'
Drawer 3- Pears with Baba. Gouache on paper. 9”x13.25”. 2020
Artist Statement
I think of my work as a diary. It is a transcription of my inner life, mostly in terms of my experience as a father, husband and son. My drawing practice—iterative, guided by impulse, humor and accident—has helped me find a small stable of representations that I explore as symbols: pears, candlesticks, shadows, and a blue shape that looks something like a helmet or mask or both. Under the sway of chance variations, unconscious desires, and intentional acts, these elements mutate with each successive drawing. They change internally and also in relation to one another, like members of a family. As they change, I feel them approaching truths that I can’t verbalize. They seem to point backwards and forwards simultaneously. Backwards to some primordial event, and forwards to some waiting mystery as promising as it is unsettling.
Artist Bio
Michael Gac Levin was born in Los Angeles, CA in 1984. He first began making art in earnest after moving to New York in 2006, as a way to express his deepening fascination with the Hasidic enclaves of Brooklyn. In 2013 he published “Jews of Today,” a book that explores and attempts to reimagine Jewish identity through drawing. Since then, he has turned his focus to drawing itself, as an interface between internal and external worlds, subjectivity and objectivity, personal fantasy and mass-culture. He has completed special projects online for the Jewish Museum and SCREEN_. His work has been featured at the International Print Center of New York, at Tiger Strikes Asteroid NY, and at Torrance Shipman Gallery. Michael holds a BA in Classics from the University of Chicago (‘06) and an MFA in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute (‘15), where he currently teaches.
Drawer 3- Pears with Baba. Gouache on paper. 9”x13.25”. 2020
Artist Statement
I think of my work as a diary. It is a transcription of my inner life, mostly in terms of my experience as a father, husband and son. My drawing practice—iterative, guided by impulse, humor and accident—has helped me find a small stable of representations that I explore as symbols: pears, candlesticks, shadows, and a blue shape that looks something like a helmet or mask or both. Under the sway of chance variations, unconscious desires, and intentional acts, these elements mutate with each successive drawing. They change internally and also in relation to one another, like members of a family. As they change, I feel them approaching truths that I can’t verbalize. They seem to point backwards and forwards simultaneously. Backwards to some primordial event, and forwards to some waiting mystery as promising as it is unsettling.
Artist Bio
Michael Gac Levin was born in Los Angeles, CA in 1984. He first began making art in earnest after moving to New York in 2006, as a way to express his deepening fascination with the Hasidic enclaves of Brooklyn. In 2013 he published “Jews of Today,” a book that explores and attempts to reimagine Jewish identity through drawing. Since then, he has turned his focus to drawing itself, as an interface between internal and external worlds, subjectivity and objectivity, personal fantasy and mass-culture. He has completed special projects online for the Jewish Museum and SCREEN_. His work has been featured at the International Print Center of New York, at Tiger Strikes Asteroid NY, and at Torrance Shipman Gallery. Michael holds a BA in Classics from the University of Chicago (‘06) and an MFA in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute (‘15), where he currently teaches.
Drawer 3- Pears with Baba. Gouache on paper. 9”x13.25”. 2020
Artist Statement
I think of my work as a diary. It is a transcription of my inner life, mostly in terms of my experience as a father, husband and son. My drawing practice—iterative, guided by impulse, humor and accident—has helped me find a small stable of representations that I explore as symbols: pears, candlesticks, shadows, and a blue shape that looks something like a helmet or mask or both. Under the sway of chance variations, unconscious desires, and intentional acts, these elements mutate with each successive drawing. They change internally and also in relation to one another, like members of a family. As they change, I feel them approaching truths that I can’t verbalize. They seem to point backwards and forwards simultaneously. Backwards to some primordial event, and forwards to some waiting mystery as promising as it is unsettling.
Artist Bio
Michael Gac Levin was born in Los Angeles, CA in 1984. He first began making art in earnest after moving to New York in 2006, as a way to express his deepening fascination with the Hasidic enclaves of Brooklyn. In 2013 he published “Jews of Today,” a book that explores and attempts to reimagine Jewish identity through drawing. Since then, he has turned his focus to drawing itself, as an interface between internal and external worlds, subjectivity and objectivity, personal fantasy and mass-culture. He has completed special projects online for the Jewish Museum and SCREEN_. His work has been featured at the International Print Center of New York, at Tiger Strikes Asteroid NY, and at Torrance Shipman Gallery. Michael holds a BA in Classics from the University of Chicago (‘06) and an MFA in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute (‘15), where he currently teaches.