Dominic Chambers

I had two windows open from Google searches right before sitting down to talk with New Haven-based painter Dominic Chambers, one researching concepts of Fabulism and how it relates to mythology and magical realism; the second, a heavy, daunting article from The Boston Globe that attempted to explain how the American collective consciousness has been tested in 2020, our lives reflected in the shadow of immense doubt and death, leaving so many with a greater sense of unease than anytime in our history. Little did I know that, moments later, Chambers would articulate how magical realism and escapism have synthesized to shape him as one of the freshest voices in contemporary art. 

 

From his early days in St Louis, to grad school at Yale, to short story writing and a strategic drive to work, Chambers has developed a unique, personal language born out of comics and the power of a good book. In the midst of preparing for the August Wilson African American Cultural Center in September, he took time to talk about process, literature, philosophy, hyperactivity, criticism and self-awareness. His work, in many ways, embodies a desire for relief and respite during moments of struggle and stress, appreciation for the powerful freedom of simply relaxing on a grassy field, and the joy of disappearing into sweet imagination. 

 

Dominic Chambers: I was born and raised there. I would say, even then, there was still a vibrant art scene. It wasn't in the same context as it is now. For example, there are a lot of contemporary artists who are working out of St. Louis, Aaron Fowler being a prominent one. So, I think there is a little bit more contemporary art landscape now. But, traditionally, it's mostly been just St. Louis-based artists who are trying to keep things vibrant. The MFA program at Washington University has created this smaller art community.

 

I think so. I’m definitely more savvy about the art world than I was when I was a student. I will say a lot of the change happened in me, because I did a lot of traveling after leaving St Louis. I lived in Italy, then New York, and all of this happened before I went to Yale for grad school. So the big change is that all these things in the art world were no longer the things I just “heard about.” I was actually participating, going to Chelsea galleries or dispensing a critical discourse with other artists. And that wasn’t happening in St. Louis because we didn’t have that community. We only talk about it there, you don't ever see it. 

 

So, in grad school, you're around great minds all the time. You're challenged in a very particular way. It's very much like standing on your own two feet or you drown. I think going to Yale and being in such close proximity to New York really changed the game for me because I actually got to see how often shows were happening, work was being made. I was closer to it. 

One of the biggest things I learned in undergrad was patience. You become aware that these things are very cyclical. Your career will be incredibly prosperous, and then it may not be. You know, peaks and valleys. And you have to be patient with being those things. But when you're immersed in that stuff in New York, you kind of are robbed of that patience, you know? To really give that practice time to mature. 

 

I think it's because that's something I can't do. That's very much what it is. For example, I have internalized the capitalist culture that we live in as Americans. I don't mean financially, I mean, I don't really believe in not being productive. I'm not a huge fan of people who aren't. Kerry James Marshall says this too: no one likes a non-producer. I have internalized that where I feel this necessity to keep working. 

 

I realized like, "Oh, shit. This is very messed up in a way." As Black people, you feel the need to fuel something in this country or own your place or offer your body to validation, whether it be psychologically or emotionally. And I realize I'm a huge reader, but also was like, "Damn, it's incredibly rare that you encounter images or ideas in people who are not being hyperactive."  I am a living example of that. I am a very active person. That was something that really got me: I'm totally complicit in this hyperactivity, 24/7 thing. I was in that system. And I do think it's incredibly unfulfilling in a sense. Where you don't know how to catch up with yourself. And someone who's seemingly stable, or people who have their shit together, have often fought for taking time for themselves, you know?

 

 

I am not, no. I am not, I am not [laughs]. I am relaxed when I look at them, because I work on so many paintings at one time. It allows me to relax and slow down because, again, I keep up with myself. A lot of artists are by themselves, we spend whole days alone.

 

Exactly. I don't see anyone! No, I'm so high strung. I'm a very anxious, high strung person. But I think what happens, and Guston said this and he’s entirely correct when he talks about it, but when you're in the studio, everything is with you. So, as you keep working, things leave and then you lose yourself. 

 

I think a lot about that process when I'm making a good painting and I'm really into it: I lose myself, in essence. That is also when I quiet down. Because I'm the loudest voice in my studio, and that's a thing I'm still, to this day, negotiating. 

 

The show is called Like the Shape of Clouds on Water. The title comes from a short story that I'm writing. It has this idea of intangibility, like clouds. You can't harm physical things, but they have a physical presence. Water, too; a body of water is something that seemingly is containable. The story is about those two things in relationship to one another.

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But then I think about the conversations that the works have among each other. I'm not necessarily as interested in going to a particular show or a group exhibition and feeling as though these are just totally individual, distinct objects that are just things that you're meant to engage with. I think about how these works relate to one another as a broader conversation and whether or not that works. I make a decent amount of work but I'm also curating which ones I'll actually be showing. 

The story is in the middle of being written right now. I might be three or four pages in. But it's about the idea that this character learns that he's always been invisible, actually, a disembodied voice who ends up being the consciousness of another person. You have a dual reality. One that he thought he was living, almost to find out he was a fragment of a larger whole, this larger whole being another body that he's actually inhabiting. One of them is the clouds and one of them is the water, all engaging with one another. So, it's talking about how environments influence who we are, the kind of person we are. The nature versus nurture thing.

Not in the midst of the pandemic. I think this comes from a love of magical realism. I like making stories and have wanted to be a writer for a long time. I love poetry, I love writing, I love books. I had this in mind when considering how I would, as I got older, write a story based on my life, but as a semi-autobiographical book that utilizes magical realism. 

 

Right. It comes from the fact that I grew up in the hood. And I was always looking for escape. And the escapism I found was in books. I have an overactive imagination. I think, by nature, I was a much more aloof and imaginative person. But it does mean I wasn't in tune with the world around me. I was just like, "Damn, this world is fucked up and I need to escape." 

 

And I love what you said about the pandemic because my mother always told me something I found really interesting. She was from Arkansas and would say, “Dead bodies don't cast shadows.” She would always tell me that. And I always just thought that was such a poetic, but also a very ominous, thing to say, too. Because her mother told her that. That when a person dies, their shadow is gone. It was this idea that their personhood, their soul or this thing that tethered them to the world around us is no longer with them.