Pigment print and pen on canvas, 60in x 84.5in

“1st attempt at understanding” is from the artist’s ongoing process of hand drawing star charts from The Observer's Atlas of the Heavens (1898: William Peck). Using blue and red ball point pen, the act of transcribing is accompanied by listening to audio recordings discussing the history of physics. For the artist, the tactile process of making marks on paper while attempting to grasp fundamental concepts of the workings of the universe endures as a performative process.

In 1921, Hermann Rorschach invented the inkblot cards that became the eponymous Rorschach test. He used a set of 10 symmetrical abstract inkblots to study psychological interpretation, imagination, thought patterns and the subconscious. Like staring up at clouds on a sunny day, the shapes of the inkblot cards suggested recognizable shapes, revealing insights into our state of mind. What do you see here? And here? Rorschach recorded his methods and the 10 diagnostic images in his book Psychodiagnostik  a year before his death in 1922. According the Scientific American, Ink Blot Tests were one of variety Ellis Island intelligence tests used in 1915.

Nearly a century later in New York City, Davis looks out of her studio across the water at the Statue of Liberty. Torch in hand since 1886 (2 years after Rorschach himself was born), Lady Liberty has long represented the great American dream, an icon of enlightenment, of freedom, of peace and of safe harbour.  In Fotopsychodiagnostik, Davis explores a new geo-political landscape outside her window. Twisting Rorschach’s test, she photographs the view from her studio and mirrors the image on both its vertical and horizontal axis. From her window on the water in Red Hook, directly facing the Statue of Liberty, the landscape is a symbolic one; here manipulated, reflected, doubled, and warped into an image that projects the complexity of our current geopolitical landscape.

Her work sheds light on the fundamental epistemological questions of our time, where knowledge is continuously diffused, reproduced and diversified through an impenetrable web on information and communication. Moving between photography, sculpture, film and collage, Davis’ artistic practice resists categorization, maintaining a consistent methodology and exploratory material process.

Video installation, 274cm x 488cm wall, diamond dust, 488cm brass pole, HD projector. 5min. loop.  Video projector, brass pole, sculptured diamond dust screen.  

“As if his throat opened into the void of stars,” (2010)  layers footage of volcanic eruption with pole dancing through a symbiotic digital interface. The moving images are set within a sound collage mixing DIMI synthesizer, Funk, Hildegard von Bingen, and helicopter blades.  Along a path at once apocalyptic and serene, mystic and scientific, the work weaves a world where myth, daily news, distance and natural disaster are interconnected. Propelled by Ovid’s story of Erysichthon’s insatiable hunger (from which the title is derived) the project traces the predicament of a highly connected world environment where participation and alienation feel like the same thing.  The unlikely conjunction of banning strip clubs in Iceland and subsequent activity of Eyjafjallajökull is both absurd causality and something far more disturbing in the environmental sublime.

A different transparency for each thing touched

Christine Davis

Performed by Vania Dodoo-Beals and Judy Luo.

Presented by the J Spot: A transitory transient radical urban space invasion window project gallery. Curated by Jennifer Morton.

Site specific window installation and performance, 10 mins

Geometry begins in violence and in the sacred.

—Michel Serres

"The Elements” is an assemblage. Over 17 years the artist cut and combined pages from Byrne’s 1847 edition of the “Elements,” with books and archival material from her own library. “The Euclid Project” was a journey through Chaos (Ovid), Immanence (Arendt), the Fantastic (Malabou), Shadow (Mallarme) and the Universe (Borges). Both text and myriad historical illustrations of the workings of the world grapple with geometric postulate and proof. The resulting archive of 162 drawings are housed within mobile screens to create an architectural system that is recombinant and transformative.

“The Elements,” reveals and revels in a world that is multiple, spirited and performative. Completed in 2020 the artist is currently animating the work through collaborative workshops.

“The Elements (knowledge of life)”

—Recto: The Imagination is a Function without an Organ

72 wood panels, 6 screens, 92” x 117” each.

—Verso: Already at War Within,

90 wood panels, 15” x 22.5” each.

"Tlön, or How I held in my hands a vast methodical fragment of an unknown planet’s entire history", 2003. Slide dissolve projection onto suspended screed of Morpho Didius butterflies;  honeycomb aluminum, cork, velvet, pins, Ektapros, Stumpfl Event Controller. 145 x 305 x 5 cm. 4min.loop, ed. of 2  

The work is based on a Borges story, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbius Tertius”, which recounts the invention of a virtual cosmos, Uqbar, and its idealized knowledge system called Tlön, attributed to "the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia." A dissolve sequence of 24 astronomy slides is projected onto a suspended screen of Morpho butterflies pinned into a grid. Documentation of the heavens and classification of wildlife are overlaid in a system of ordering and symmetry that is at once mystical and sadistic, absurd and universal. In constant  metamorphosis, light from stars is registered, projected and finally reflected by the tiny scales of the wings. Through micro and macro forces, "Tlön, or How I held in my hands a vast methodical fragment of an unknown planet’s entire history," explores the concept of time as transformation of change. 

Six channel video projection onto 6 satellite dishes, 3 steel tripod stands. Each dish 309 cm. 5 min.loop 

"World Without Sun" is titled after Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle's underwater documentary of the first sea colony;  a bubble or "flying saucer" manned by oceanauts.  Filmed in 1964 this breathtaking glimpse of a world beneath resides within the imaginary of another era.  In Davis' rendition the  underwater world collides with its exterior-- propeller planes, environmental protest and views of the solar system -- as the work grapples with the radical interdependencies of life on this planet.  Drawing from 19th C. biologist Jakob von Uexküll's concept of umwelt, or the perceptual world in which an organism exists and acts as a subject, "World Without Sun" considers our perceptual world (fuelled by human cycles of production and consumption) as that of communication.  

Etched steel and thread, 67 x 31.5 in each 

The letters abbreviating nucleotides, A, C, G, T, that map the DNA sequence are individually etched on metal squares. Drawn from a neural (homeobox) sequence the squares are sewn into grids shaped like armor. This work explores a shift in biological science from a mechanical model of blood and guts to one based on communication. Linking knowledge, language and war, for this project the artist worked in a genetic lab, examining microscopic DNA (which looks like spaghetti) and followed its rendering into a string of letters. Focusing on this process of abstracting "the invisible life of life" by first reduction and then recombination, gene splicing is related to film splicing - making the body conform to the economy of the film strip - an animate narrative of inanimate parts - neither porous nor messy. The sequence sewing is ongoing, in pairs, and will be comprised of 20 forms once completed. The artist chose to work with a homeobox sequence (found in humans and animals) as it is a regulator - a sequence that exists solely to inform other parts of the code when to switch on and off.  

35 mm colour film loop, copper mesh, 365cm wide,  length variable, 1min 12s loop 

Joining a 35mm film projector with a 19th century sewing machine, a short film loop of a veil dance choreographed by Loie Fuller is projected onto a double sided screen of translucent copper mesh. The image blazes with electric intensity. The dancer is surrounded with spiralling sheets of white silk manipulated by poles attached to the body. Creating forms that twist and fold in space the fabric appears to move the dancer in an uncanny spectacle that defies the laws of gravity. Image and screen meld in hybrid materiality; screen and space are inseparable as the copper cloth hits the floor and continues to roll out towards the spectator. The black and white film is intercut with flashes of dazzling red pure light - morse code.

Mixed media slide dissolve projection onto suspended screen of buttons, 2 mirrors, 4 projectors, 18min.

Words are projected in dissolve onto a screen dense with collected buttons of diverse shape, colour and era. Mirrors are suspended on either side of the ornate surface. The words above perform a segment of Beckett’s play, “Not I”. The passage below, from Simone Weil’s “Gravity and Grace”, is fragmented precisely like Beckett’s stuttering speech. The work moves through both French and English, with the translated text always projected in reverse. Different word pairings erupt within each language forcing points of intersection and disjuncture. The ornate words glittering in the dark are punctuated by the rhythm of the projectors.

Mixed media slide dissolve projection on screen of giant silk roses suspended with wire, 229 x 305 x 114 cm. 3min. loop

Endura Metallic Print, Edition of 3, 90x120 cm

Through slow slide dissolves a woman methodically eats the pages of a book, Alice in Wonderland. Her performance is documented with slides, edited to 24 frames and projected onto a cube sculpted of giant suspended roses on stems. The material density of the screen both forms and deforms the image. Through this work the artist continues her exploration of the projection apparatus as a living assemblage where support and image meld in a process of thickening that slides between perception, hallucination and cognition.

Hand-blown glass, steel harness, wire, theatrical spot light. 60 in. 

Molded directly from a 1970’s Judy, a dressmaker’s dummy is hand-blown out of glass. The singular act of expelled breath creates a form arrested at its moment of inception. Paradoxically the dummy, intended as an instrument of mass production, is imperfectly materialized as a transparent and non-functional object that acquires a life of its own. Conceived from the artist's interest in the history of the automaton, and insistence on probing a relation between animate and inanimate, this work is a reflection upon "L'Ève future," by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.

Installation, light box set into wall of cell shaped room. 

The 308 contact lenses of the index are placed within a lightbox recessed into the wall of a small, cell-like room.

Slide dissolve projection on suspended screen of feathers, 230 x 345 x 1 cm. 5min. loop

The work reflects the artist's ongoing interest in Mallarme, in this instance the mechanical act of chance as a trapeze act is re-choreographed by slide projectors. Executing a twirl mid-air, the trapeze artist’s routine is sliced into stills and projected as a dissolve sequence onto a suspended screen of black feathers. Rupturing the integrity of the projected image a surface emerges whose plastic hybridity is in constant metamorphosis.

Twelve light tables, laser etched contact lenses, 111 x 34 x 34 cm. 

An index of 308 words laser etched onto a series of coloured contact lenses is divided into pairs (right/left) and organized into 12 chess games that are displayed on light tables arranged in a circle. The words are taken from a dictionary published in Valencia during the Spanish inquisition. Mapped into a new historical relation by the operation of chance and prosthetic appearance the words are vividly modern and not easily dismissed as "of the past." The contact lens is like a skin-film on which trauma is condensed as both process and product - linking truth to the production of the visual. Paradoxically, the word is no longer readable if the lens is worn and, the inscribing laser is blinding if looked at. Like the prisoner in Kafka's "Penal Colony", the judgement is incised on the back of the victim and she/he can feel it but not read it. The work was produced in response to the rise of live televised trials ie. Rodney King and a sense that the artist/viewer is implicated in the process.

Endura chromogenic print, 180 x 112 cm, edition of 3.

Black and white slide projection, satin tufting, gilt frame, rope, pulleys, 203cm x 348cm. Photograph: silver-print, steel rulers, neon light, 46 x 61 cm. 

Photographed during a screening of Pasolini’s “Salo,” a still subtitled "il n'ya rien a faire" is projected onto a suspended screen within the gallery. The brilliant white satin tufted surface of the screen melds with the chateau interior and ambiguous action. The work probes the relation between physical and moral space implicit within Pasolini's staging of fascism. Opposite is a small photograph of the artist standing on a book – Sade’s "les cingt vingt jours" opened to the passage the film portrays.

See "Configurations of the Gaze," Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Exhibition Catalogue

Silverprint, Carved Silverleaf Frame, 22" x 28", ed. of 3

Silver Print, Stainless Steel Rulers, 22" x 28"

Chromogenic print, 122 x 81 x 8 cm, edition of 3.

Endura Metallic Print on Aluminium, 36" x 60", ed. of 3

97% Carbon Ink Print on Japanese Paper, 48" x 72", ed. of 3.

Endura Chromogenic Print, 28cm x 41cm. ed of 3

Slide projector, orchid, sketchbooks.

A page from Euclid’s “Elements” is projected onto a potted orchid. The plant rests on a stack of blank books and is kept alive by the light of the projector - and intermittent sun. A fragile experiment in photosynthesis, the act of projection is materialized -- it sustains the orchid which in turn forms the image.

"Cleave,"  # 1 - 4 Cibachrome Print, ed. of 3,  24" x 36" 

Butterfly wings representing the soul, this animated collage of a child's zebra toy rests atop the NY Times milestone page of 100,000 names of those lost to the pandemic. Created and edited by the artist while recovering from covid-19.

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