Soft Shadows

In his recent exhibits Self-Summoning (shadow work) and Shadow Work (chapters) (both 2022), Lehmann Maupin artist Dominic Chambers’ work pours color into the Jungian concept of the Shadow. He shares how working with Carl Jung’s theory of shadow was revelatory for his artwork. 

We are pleased to present Dominic in conversation with artist and JUNG Archademy faculty Chantal Powell for a special event Saturday Jan. 20, 2024.

Dominic sees the Shadow as an enduring presence to be encountered, “It’s always there. The shadow manifests when a light source hits it”.  He will be discussing his use of color and light in depicting the shadow, and the power of art to give expression to unconscious processes.

“Shadow working is essentially when you do some introspective work to uncover parts of your identity or your personality you have potentially neglected or not addressed, but effect your personality and your life. So you have to go back and uncover what has happened to you, relationships with people and environments, and to re-contextualize those things and to revise them in a way that’s suitable for your life today.”
- Chambers, interview with ArtNet: Painter Dominic Chambers on How Jungian Theory Shaped His Art, and the Transformational Role of Therapy in His Own Life

Transferring his personal learnings within Jungian therapy, his recent paintings point to the importance of looking inward and the transformative power of the imagination.

“In Chambers’s vivid paintings figures rest, read, and reflect in quiet peaceful settings straddling real and imaginary worlds. The bucolic landscapes are at once familiar and nostalgic, yet magical in their tonality. The rainbow-colored ghostly silhouettes in To encounter a shadow (2022) and Self-Summoning (shadow work) showcase Chambers’s connection to spirituality and self-actualization. A strong sense of vulnerability provides moments of respite and empathy for the viewer.”  –  Folasade Ologundudu for Art Seen - Dominic Chambers: Soft Shadows

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Soft Shadows

DOMINIC CHAMBERS, M.F.A.

IN CONVERSATION

with

Chantal Powell, Ph.D.

x min

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Hosted by Chantal Powell

Chantal Powell is an UK-based artist, educator and curator. Her art practice explores the symbolic language of the unconscious and is informed by a PhD in social psychology and an ongoing study of Jungian theory and inner alchemy.

Chantal is also the founder of the artist residency program Hogchester Arts in West Dorset and hosts the speaker program "The Red Book Club". She presents illustrated talks and workshops on psychological alchemy from an artist’s perspective and has co-curated exhibitions with a focus on archetypally symbolic art. 

Dominic Chambers (b. 1993 St. Louis, MO; lives and works in New Haven, CT) creates vibrant paintings that simultaneously engage art historical models, such as color-field painting and gestural abstraction, and contemporary concerns around race, identity, and the necessity for leisure and reflection. Interested in how art can function as a mode for understanding, recontextualizing, or renegotiating one’s relationship to the world, the artist sees painting as a critical and intellectual endeavour, as much as an aesthetic one. A writer himself, Chambers draws inspiration from literature, especially Magical Realism and the writing of W.E.B. Du Bois, particularly Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, and one of its central themes―the veil. A product of racial injustice that is a metaphorical lens through which Black bodies are observed and experienced, references to the veil appear throughout the artist’s work, whether in the large swaths of color that obscure the figures in his Wash Paintings series, or in his recurring use of a raindrop motif as both an active and passive element in his paintings. Many of Chambers’ compositions incorporate Fabulist elements, including ghostly silhouettes meant to be stand-ins for the artist and surreal landscapes that feel both familiar yet unplaceable.

Chambers received his B.F.A from Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Milwaukee, WI in 2016, and his M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT in 2019. Solo exhibitions of his work have been organized at The August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Pittsburgh, PA (2020); Luce Gallery, Turin, Italy (2020); The Millitzer Studio and Gallery, St. Louis, MO (2017); and the Residential Gallery, Des Moines, IA (2017).

Chambers’ work is in a number of private and public collections, such as the Green Family Foundation, Dallas, TX; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; and Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL.

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Dominic was included on Forbes - 30 Under 30 to watch in 2021.