David Gumbs
Born in Guadeloupe in 1977
My artistic approach is based on a famous quotation from XVII century french philosopher and chemist Antoine Lavoisier : mass is neither gained nor lost, merely transformed. Thus, life cycle, infinite scale, memory, and the Sacred, are themes that emerge from larger topics of interest such as landscape, inner landscape, body landscape.
My painting and drawing universes are shaped from thousands of interlaced lines. Often born from the center of the art board they grow in a circular process, just like life's accroissement. These immersed spaces reveal personal mental projections from the unconscious. This process is the result of an automatic drawing act. Which is sometimes the witness of a runoff discharge. The interlaced texture created with and without color plays an interactive rhizome plot of each visitor's unconsciousness.
My photography work shot in the caribbean and Asia, my online interactive videos, reflect the living. They suggest our fears embodied in composite creatures hidden deep in our unconsciousness. (Ecorc(é) series). Similar as my paintings these mystical "presences" question the genesis, and life's cycle.
The trees from our childhood stories reveal hominoid shapes, sometimes a bestiary, sometimes orgy scenes, romanticism postures, or Goya like paintings. Other times they appear as vertical impulses celebrating celestial beings. As time goes there are more and more beings.
Just like a fellow traveller, I call them my wandering friends, the vegetable kingdom souls, the forest Gods.
mentalspaces.davidgumbs.com (blog)
Contact: aica-sc@orange.fr
Graphisme: dinographx - dinographx@gmail.com Création du Site: Detlev Schüller