As one enters My Pet Ram’s humble gallery space full of moderately-sized Gustonesque paintings, the viewer is transported into the surreal personal nooks and crannies of Michael Gac Levin’s reality. His paintings are heavily influenced by his family life. Familiar landscapes are juxtaposed with foreign characters and shapes. The artist tells a fantastical story in this new body of work through a day in the life of two characters embodied by an apple and a tree-like figure.
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These characters are depicted in a variety of everyday scenarios: getting married, walking by Central Park or through a botanical garden, waiting for a bus, and recalling their family’s past immigration journeys. The humor in the work is unquestionable. Clearly a fan of Phillip Guston, Levin leans heavily on the playful rendering of his whimsical characters.
For several of the works in the show, he even uses signature pinks and reds, which Guston is well known for. The stylistic homage is tasteful as Levin takes both content and painterly choices in a whole new direction. The story begins with the characters meeting, getting married, and settling in NYC. Levin comes from a Jewish cultural background, most evidently depicted in Destination Wedding as his character couple stands under the Huppah while a singular shoe crushes a glass, symbolizing the destruction of Jewish temples and remembrance of their ancestors’ struggles.
Destination Wedding, 28”x24”, Acrylic on canvas
In the painting titled Harbor, an MTA bus zooms across the composition as the little tree and apple wait for its arrival with I love New York attire. The dream cloud above the bus recalls an immigration journey, perhaps of the artist’s ancestors, as an image of the lower Manhattan skyline glistens in the setting sun.
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Levin also reflects on his experience as a parent, bringing certain absurdity and chaos into his work. His color choices are almost cheery at times and contribute to the playground look of his landscapes. May Pole High is a painting that is particularly playful with an image of a couple of bananas in high heels, lounging watermelon slices, actively conversing pear and strawberry in the foreground, and a maypole at its center situated quite clearly in Central Park. The artist’s anthropomorphizing of fruit, giving them characteristics of everyday people, makes the work quite funny. The background element of a line of hatted figures is unusual, as this is the only time human figures appear in a painting, and a ghostly shape appears in the sky, showing evidence of previous thought. The imagery of the Maypole dance is light and cheery, with a hint of cynicism as it hints at the passage of time. The cheerful absurdity is somehow both foreign and familiar as this autobiography unfolds in front of us. The work is also heavily layered, with pentimento in most of the paintings.
Levin appears to rethink and rework his work multiple times as if trying to achieve a specific effect throughout the compositions. This is most evident in the lower right section of a piece titled Beach, as a ghostly shape peers through the sand.
In Dream of a Principe, Dream of a Temple, and Dream of Crossroads, pentimento is undoubtedly part of the painting as the artist leaves an evident process underneath the top semi-opaque layer of pinkish paint.
The viewer is left searching for hints of the artist’s thinking process as he reworked his composition, color choices, and shapes. This personal and painterly show is not to be missed by painters and non-artists alike. Rooted in storytelling, philosophy, and a love of painting, Levin makes his show incredibly relatable.
All photos courtesy of My Pet Ram.
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Object Relations: Michael Gac Levin at My Pet Ram
48 Hester St. NY, NY, , a solo exhibition of new paintings by Michael Gac Levin,
Through December 15, 2024.
About the writer: Anna Shukeylo is an artist, writer, educator, and curator working and living in the New York Metropolitan area. She has written for Artcritical, Painters on Painting, and Art Spiel. Her paintings have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Kean University, NJ, Manchester University, IN, and in group shows at Auxier/Kline, Equity Gallery, Stay Home Gallery, among others. @annashukeylo