LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.- Beginning this Saturday through May 15, 2004, their will be an opening reception at the Soho Gallery to launch the exhibition “Sacred Space” by Christopher Cousins. Christopher Cousins’ works are living symbols of his struggle to perceive the Transcendent. The paintings themselves are symbols containing symbols pointing toward this effort. He looks to create fields of action or archetypal landscapes in which this struggle takes place. According to Cousins, this sacred space is the sphere in which sacrifice, redemption, suffering, ecstasy, and ultimately, resurrection occur and effect transformations in our being. This symbolic space is inside us and outside us; it is cosmic and microcosmic; it is space itself.
Underneath the surface of the paintings Cousins uses found materials (twigs, leaves, string, etc.) as textural support to evoke an organic, naturally evolving, perhaps chaotic environment. Cuts, slashes, and stigmata etched into the surface express the suffering brought about by the Ordeal of Transformation. Circle (as cosmic egg, platonic ideal, mandala, heavenly sphere, etc.) and line (intellectual rigor, Cartesian duality, Euclidean rationality,) imposed onto the work arise out of a desire to give structure to that experience; to codify it. He believes that we are pattern seekers and it is partly this drive that allows us to perceive radiance; that it is a necessary, though perhaps, vain attempt to give meaning to an experience that is itself only and has no inherent meaning.
Ultimately, this is what abstraction in art is about for Cousins: it has no inherent meaning. As in life, it is we who give meaning to it.
From as early as I can remember, all I was interested in was drawing and painting. However, at seventeen I turned my back on painting and left home to attend Boston University to study philosophy. While there I discovered another art form to express my creativity: acting. After graduating with a BFA in 1983, I moved to NYC to begin an acting career.
Though painting was always in the back of my mind, I still did not know what to paint. There was something missing. Acting was not enough. I soon grew restless and left NYC for Colorado, where I worked on ranches and did construction. I kicked around doing odd jobs. I moved to Mexico and ran a bookstore for a while. Finally, I returned to New York and picked up acting again. Then something snapped. Something awakened in me and I found myself painting. I had no intention of showing; I just needed to paint. I was working something out with each painting. Religious and mythological themes kept recurring in my work. I realized I had to get to what lay beneath these themes. I had to leave these familiar characters behind; I had to leave story altogether.
I now work in abstract. I never know exactly where each painting will take me. Sometimes I feel the painting is creating me. Each new work is terrifying; there is no map, no guide, only instinct and, one hopes, intellect. The idea of intellect versus instinct interests me. I am trying to understand the world I live in through both myth and science. In my work, I try to create a place that transcends our politics, our culture, ourselves. I use mythic, symbolic, and cosmic images to express the dynamic relationship between mind and nature. with emotion.
"What is important is the experience one has viewing the work, not from what the work arises or to what the work might refer. These are works of aesthetic arrangement. They are meant to be read by the body not the mind," says Cousins.
