As Time Stood Still
Almost ten years have elapsed since David Gerstein created his large-scale series of works entitled Tango sur Seine.
Now he returns to the same scene, only this time surprising us by turning to the photographic medium in a series of 50
photographs digitally printed on full sheet cotton paper. They depict a dance floor inside a sculpture garden on the banks
of the River Seine in Paris, a place where people come to dance the tango under the stars every evening throughout
summer, continuing until the early hours of the morning.
A chance visit by Gerstein to that arena in the summer of the year 2000 turned into a daily observation of those
anonymous figures, swaying night after night to the accompaniment of tango music. His profound interest as a figurative
artist in understanding the bodily movements, absorbing the rhythm and blending color and sound into one vibrant entity
resulted in some small sketches and gouache representations of the scenes he observed. Gradually, these developed into
a series of oil and acrylic paintings on large canvases, with oil-painted wooden surfaces adding a further sculptural dimension.
The “Tango sur Seine” paintings series was exhibited for the first time in 2001 at the Jerusalem artist house. His pop-inspired
paintings exploit an existing tension between the colored wood panels and the frenetic brush strokes that create the figures
and their movement.
The Tango sur Seine photographic series depicts the artist’s view of examining the camera’s capacity as intermediary,
its ability to be suggestive of the spectator’s position. A source of inspiration can be found in the work of French photographer
Henri Cartier Bresson, who sought to capture in his lens the transient, the everyday, the constant movement around us,
in his harmonious and balanced compositions. On his part, his camera allowed him to catch that “crucial moment” when
reality and esthetics combine to form a powerful visual image. That moment is largely surrealistic, a quality that is equally
true of both the Tango sur Seine series, photographs and paintings.
Why did Gerstein revisit the same scene with a medium that he has never previously used in his work? He explains:
“I continued to be fascinated by the subject of the tango, even when I was no longer preoccupied with it. It became a part
of me, like the balconies of Tel Aviv (1979). In Paris again last summer, I decided to return to that dance arena, as one
goes back to visit an old friend. Initially I set out to take photographs, not as a photographer but as a painter, only this time
I decided to print the photographs. And once they were printed I realized that I enjoy them. Their monochromatic nature
surprised me. I took them in twilight and at night time and they have a bluish tinge from the reflection of the evening sky
and the Seine. But they are not vividly colored like the paintings. The black and white shades in the photos offered me a
different way of seeing the same, familiar composition. I understood that photography enriched the way I looked, the way
I saw, so that I, a fundamentally figurative painter for whom photography represents the unbearable lightness of art,
discovered the power that medium has for me. I discovered that it is of interest to me because it allows me to express how
I see things in a new and different way. At the same time it was important for me to retain the directness and honesty of
what I saw and perform no computer enhancement.”
This brings Gerstein back to the romance and alienation of the dance, this time through the camera and scraps of foot
movements captured in the lens. The similarity of the two series, despite the long interim period and difference in media,
sharpens the artist’s position as an eternal observer, examining at any given moment his relationship with the external
reality around him, as well as the tools at his disposal, and seeking to elicit as much expression as possible from those
images – lofty and prosaic at one and the same time – that have accompanied him for so many years.
Irena Gordon