If the Renaissance established portray as an “open window” into the world, aiming for excellent imitation of actuality (Leon Battista Alberti, De Pictura), the trendy age liberated the medium from its strictly figurative and celebratory worth, permitting it to discover psychological, emotional and poetic realms. This strategy characterizes the work of Dominic Chambers, a gifted painter and up to date Yale graduate whose apply has garnered huge acclaim over the previous years, rapidly resulting in his debut with the esteemed gallery Lehmann Maupin in London. Following the present’s opening, Observer spoke with Dominic to debate how this physique of labor represents each a continuation and evolution of his apply, which now embraces a extra summary, lyrical dimension.
Spanning two flooring of the gallery’s Cromwell Place house in London’s South Kensington, the exhibition showcases a variety of his vivid and expansive work, brightly coloured research and extra intimate works on paper. It takes its title from the Greek phrase “Meraki,” which, because the artist explains, lacks a direct English equal however interprets roughly to “pouring one’s soul into one’s work.” On this collection, Dominic intensifies his exploration of portray as a automobile to convey a profound internal imaginative and prescient of actuality—one which transcends mere sensory or materials elements to faucet right into a extra emotional, primal connection between the soul and the world.
The works on present signify a commencement of kinds from his earlier our bodies of labor, together with these introduced in his current solo exhibition on the gallery in New York. Though these new work function inside the identical faculty of thought and make use of an identical mode of constructing, retaining parts like coloration subject portray and touches of surrealism or magical realism which have all the time characterised his apply, in addition they push additional. “They embody poetic concepts or grow to be types of poetry,” Chambers mentioned, drawing a parallel to René Magritte’s assertion that the operate of portray is “to make poetry seen.” For this artist, portray is about deeply perceiving and absorbing the world, then translating it into poetic phrases that reveal common parts of human expertise. “It’s about capturing a religious element… a surreal element to our personal actuality.”
On this manner, Chambers’ work act as allegories of conditions that resonate with on a regular basis life but transcend particular occasions to attain a extra common, poetic high quality. This strategy additionally underpins his surreal use of coloration, which serves as a software to convey distinct emotional and psychological states. “Shade is a personality and a protagonist in my work,” he mentioned. “If coloration might tackle a physique, a type, an identification, for me, it could be like an angel, functioning as a messenger in historic work.”
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Literature informs and evokes Chambers’ work, guiding it right into a metaphorical, extremely symbolic realm that distills the important sensations via which we expertise the world. His work try and translate a psychological and religious universe, embracing the concept our understanding of our environment emerges from a fancy interaction of reminiscence, creativeness, emotion and noticed actuality—a steady dialectic between the internal self and the exterior world.
Mary Oliver’s poetry has had a profound affect on Chambers’ apply. “Her poetry is all about observing the world with ardour and devotion and discovering poetry inside the surrounding panorama,” he defined, mentioning parallels to his personal strategy—one thing that may be seen The Summoning World (Studio Angel) (2024), a large-scale portray that fuses the artist’s studio with a tranquil panorama inhabited by a single, reclining angel. “It’s basically my inside area manifested as a picture,” Chambers mentioned. “It’s a zone of artistic manufacturing, the place objects are made by the artist, but additionally an area the place the entire world converges—the previous, current, future, pals, household and reminiscences. Your total internal panorama.” Ralph Waldo Emerson’s writings, notably The Over-Soul (which discusses an “interconnective tissue” linking our internal world with our environment), have additionally influenced his work. “He describes how one deposits the oversoul into an object, like writing or studying, making a bridge between your internal panorama and the broader world.”
All through our dialog, Chambers often returns to the notion of devotion—a deeply contemplative engagement with one’s atmosphere. There’s an nearly religious high quality in his work, echoing the allegorical methods of conventional Christian work alluding to otherworldly dimensions. But Chambers stays grounded within the bodily, sensory expertise of our world, searching for not the “divine” however the “religious interconnectedness” of beings in nature. For Chambers, portray itself is the angel, the messenger, hinting at this different dimension of actuality. “These work—or these poems, as I’d contemplate them—are methods of articulating an concept,” he mentioned. “A poem and a portray are the identical: they’re each vessels for expression.”
Chambers describes his new physique of labor as a extra full mise en scène of the weather which have constantly characterised his apply: symbolic landscapes inhabited by ghostly figures, particular person characters in moments of introspection and scenes of reconnection with the internal self. Within the London present, these parts converge into deeply evocative, dreamlike scenes that seize each the religious and the bodily elements of actuality, mixing within the psyche after which utilizing symbols to speak shared human experiences. Even in Lemon Hour (The place You’ll Discover Me), the younger man’s personal universe merges with the panorama round him.
In embracing and translating this holistic view of the world, Chambers’ work revive the kid’s unfiltered gaze—a manner of seeing that blurs traces between self and environment, between creativeness and sensory expertise, perceiving all the pieces as deeply interconnected and interdependent. Chambers is very drawn to rekindling this sense of pure “marvel.” Maybe unsurprisingly, a recurring aspect in his work is the flying kite, as seen in The Indra Signal (2024); they punctuate landscapes inhabited by small, nameless figures—characters open to identification via private reminiscence or creativeness. “The wonders of youth are very thrilling to me, but additionally the sophisticated elements, after we begin to perceive how huge and quick the world is,” he concluded. “I really like the concept a portray could be a automobile of time, a medium for time journey, igniting your capacity to marvel once more.”
On this sense, the seemingly surreal parts in his work function reminders of each the enjoyment and awe of childhood, in addition to the bittersweet lack of that harmless, transcendent manner of seeing the world—one which, at the very least symbolically, could be revived inside Chambers’ imagined realm.
Dominic Chambers’ “Meraki” is on view at Lehmann Maupin, London, via November 9.
