CAVIN-MORRIS GALLERY

BLOOD OF SPACE: DRAWINGS BY DAVID CHAIM SMITH

APRIL 1 - MAY 15, 2010

David Chaim Smith is unstuck in time. David Chaim Smith makes drawings. These drawings are not about the art world. Yet he is not an Outsider Artist. In fact he is a perfect argument for the futility of any attempt to define Outsider. They are not about Contemporary Art’s self-referential contexts. Nor are these drawing about David Chaim Smith. They are incandescent utterances from the nexus point of unutterable ecstasy. They are inchoate maps of the un-mappable places of Original Creation. Is it dangerous to document these things? Yes it is. Throughout the history of Man it has been dangerous for the Mediators between Tangible and Intangible to absorb and expose Esoteric Teachings.

He was born in 1964 in Queens, New York, attended RISD and received his MFA at Columbia. Then his bio changes.

1990: beginning of intensive study of alchemy and Western Esoteric Qabalah

1990-1997: ritual work and study with several western occult orders

1997: all activity in visual art suspended in favor of practical mysticism

1997-1998: residence at Crazy Cloud Hermitage

1998-2006: immersion in Chassidic mysticism and traditional Hebrew Kabbalah and several teachers

2007: innovation of a set of graphic keys based on the 13th century mystical text ”Maayin HaChochmah.” With these I have resumed image making after my 10-year hiatus from visual art.

Self-Published Books: The Kabbalistic Mirror of Genesis, Zion Matrix

There is nothing New Age about this mysticism. It isn’t at all user-friendly. These intricate beautifully rendered chart-like drawings compel you to give up your own time frames and become absorbed and changed. The images settle into your psyche as well as your aesthetic reference zone. But for some reason these involved mad dances through words and sacred geometries, biomorphic and astral thought forms, incantations and exhortations are not in the least solipsistic. No more so then the constellations are or wave patterns seen from the sky or the mating dances of bees, and that is because David Chaim Smith is also a great artist who, under the pretence of being narratively self-effacing, organizes and arranges non-visual information into amazing hyperbolic cascades of visual information and composition. His ever-present artistic micro managing is kept invisible. He is a Keeper of Mysteries but his desire is for you to enter them as well so there is a tremendous amount of generosity in his Vision.

The Blood of Space is integral. It is the Matrix. It is “the basic space of phenomena.” 

Cavin-Morris Gallery is proud to introduce the work of a true Mystic. He has thrown his artistic Body in front of us to take the Bolt of Lightning and transform its crackling hyper-intensity into black and white images of Primal Insight.