Dominic Chambers, Fairground Park (the shadowy place), 2022. Oil on linen, 84 x 72 inches. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London. Photo courtesy Daniel Kukla.
There's something dreamy and almost magical about the spaces rendered by Dominic Chambers in Birthplace, his new solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. They feel familiar and yet slightly out of space and time.
The large paintings and sculptures are surreal but grounded in reality, evoking places from Chambers’ youth in St. Louis. The specifics of the locations are not essential, however—they feel nostalgic, even if you’ve never set foot in the actual space. That they feel instantly personal even to the new viewer is no coincidence. Chambers created a new body of work for Birthplace, his first hometown museum exhibition, curated by former CAM chief curator Wassan Al-Khudhairi.
“I feel really honored that he agreed to do this with us at CAM,” says Al-Khudhairi. “He was really interested in making a new body of work, a new series of paintings. I think he wanted to think about the significance of what it means to have an exhibition in St. Louis. The exhibition is, in a way, an homage to the spaces in the city that helped him develop and hone his sense of creativity and artistic expression.”
Dominic Chambers. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin. Photo courtesy Daniel Kukla.
The spaces themselves are varied and beautiful—Fairground Park, the Central Library, and the Saint Louis Art Museum, to name a few—and they contain a sense of wonder and wistfulness that feels tied to the memory of youth. “The kind of magic of my memory and wonder at those spaces was sort of the impetus for me to heighten the magical presence within the work,” says Chambers. “I love surrealism, but how would I describe surrealism or the kind of magical nature that I associate with those spaces? For me, it was through color.”
Indeed, the color (and lack thereof) in the pieces created for Birthplace is essential. From a vibrant field of red in a classroom to a soft transition through the rainbow along the lines of a basketball court to a transparent playground, the choices Chambers makes convey his own feelings about the chosen spaces.
“Color contains magic,” says Chambers. “If you deploy it in a certain way, it heightens the power of that image in a kind of magical sense.”
While the artist hesitates to guess how people may feel about Birthplace, he hopes that its presence at CAM may inspire future artists and show them a path forward.
“Since I’m coming home, I really hope people take from the show a recognition that I exist and that this is an option,” says Chambers. “What I hope people take with them is an acknowledgement that this is a space for participation, and we can do well in it. You can thrive in it, too.”
Birthplace runs September 8 through February 11, 2024 at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.
