Portrait of a black cat by GEOFFREY GERSTEN

GEOFFFREY GERSTEN (Arizona, USA, 1986)

Geoffrey Gersten has been a painter from the moment he finished school. Since 2010 he hasn’t stopped exhibiting in galleries across North America and Asia and selling his work with remarkable success. Today his creations can be found in important public and private collections in the United States, his work has been featured in publications like Juztapox and Hi-Fructose, and he is represented in his home country by influential galleries such as Copro Gallery in Los Angeles and Morpheus in Las Vegas.

A self-taught painter, Gersten is heavily influenced by the great pictorial masters, from 16th-century Flemish painters, Velázquez, Titian, Van der Weyden and Bosch to early 20th-century American artists like Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell and Grant Wood. For instance, Gersten has used his brushes and imagination to create several unique takes on the latter’s famous canvas American Gothic, replacing Wood’s austere, grim farmers with cows, robots, fantasy characters and even Super Mario.

An ardent admirer of Salvador Dalí, he embodies “pop-surrealism” better than most, often reinterpreting the classics he loves and historical paintings, photographs and films with a splendid sense of humour and irony. Gersten’s painstakingly detailed technique creates poignant atmospheres that are often incongruous but always impressive in compositions inhabited by charming robots, sweet wide-eyed little animals, fun cartoon and video game characters, animated toys and a large cast of fantastic characters.