David Chaim Smith (b.1964) is an artist and writer based in
Brooklyn, New York. He was educated locally and attended Rhode Island
School of Design where he gained a BFA in drawing. In 1989 he graduated
from Columbia University with his Masters.
Even from early days, David has sought to challenge convention.
His younger years were at times turbulent, but through a process of
introspection David began to develop his skills as a draughtsman,
mapping his internal universe symbolically. These ‘gnosimes’ (as he
terms them) deepened his interest in exploring such occluded worlds, and
subsequent to graduating from Columbia David began an intensive study
of alchemy and Western Ceremonial Esotericism.
Over the next seven years David studied the Golden Dawn system
and worked within several Lodges, but in 1997 he set aside both this
structured approach and all activities with his visual art to take
residence in a gnostic Hermitage in the American midwest. In his studies
there he found new methodologies, most notably those for approaching a
non-dual perspective via a Gnostic-tantra praxis.
David returned to New York in 1998 and immersed himself in
Chassidic mysticism and traditional Hebrew Kabbalah. This he embraced
through the devotional approach of Breslov, and it was here he made a
profound inner connection through the meditative praxis of ‘Hitbodedut.’
In 1999 David encountered The Fountain of Wisdom, a text that has
survived as a 13th century manuscript in the Vatican Library. He worked
with the text for many years, drawing from his experiences as an ecstatic visionary artist.
In 2004 he made a breakthrough in interpretation with the development
of ‘graphic maps,’ and within a few years had reached a degree of
fluency that allowed him to transfer their syntax and visual vocabulary
to works of art. His series of drawings such as Machinery of the
Apparitional Playground (2007-2008), Blood of Space (2008-2009) and The
Sacrificial Universe (2009 to date) are numinous examples of his
progress. As a writer and artist whose creative engine is fuelled by a
devotional approach to ecstatic visionary mysticism, a unique dimension
of David’s work stems from aspects of ideational contemplation
considered as a mystical path.
David has self-published material in the past, but his most
recent work has been for others, most notably The Kabbalistic Mirror of
Genesis (Daat Press, 2010) and an essay entitled ‘The silence that
speaks’ in John Zorn’s excellent Arcana V (Tzadik, 2010). He has held
exhibitions at the Cavin Morris Gallery, NYC, (2010) and at the Andre
Zarre Gallery, NYC, (1995). His new book, The Sacrificial Universe,
explores recent themes in his graphic work.
