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“When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses; the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other Will or Spirit that produces them.” (Berkeley. Principles #29)’
The first time I met light artist Chris Levine, he was having an epiphany. In his studio after a dinner, he was showing a little cluster of us how the lasers in his Flower of Light sculpture worked when someone asked him if he had a Jersey £100 note with his portrait of The Queen on it. Showing us the note under the laser light, his genuine excitement about how this project had grown exponentially seemed to absorb us all – like an expanding universe of possibilities.
Before the talkies, when films where a silent set of moving images, everything depended on the lighting director – not only to give us the mood and tone but to create the narrative. Cast in light and shadows, they made us see things a certain way: villain approaching from the shadows, innocent girl in danger, hero saves the day. Light not only allows us to perceive things a certain way – light is everything we see. Today, our hyper-urban environment is increasingly saturated with the technicolour of man made lights and images, all competing for our attention.
With his first solo exhibition at The Fine Art Society, Light 3.142 (the number of PI), 148 New Bond Street until the end of June, Chris Levine is inviting us to step away from the stream of endless lights and photographs that we only partially perceive, and step into an expansive moment of calm. “Laser is the purest form of light,” he said as we were immersed in the ruby glow of his piece, “the very thing at the core of matter and space.” Flower of Light uses a combination of electronic lasers, crystal optics, and sacred geometry to tune out the din and focus our attention.
Highly celebrated for his iconic portrait of the Queen, entitled The Lightness of Being, this exhibition unveils his latest portrait of the queen of popular culture, Kate Moss, She’s Light (Pure) 2013, in collaboration with make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury. But Levine is not casting his subjects in an extraneous narrative – he is bringing into focus what is already there. He is asking us to step into the scene he has created and be – shine – in our own moment. It is this simplicity of purpose that makes his pieces so modern – they are presenting us with a new way of seeing, by inviting us to see beyond the superficial.
“I have always been fascinated with the idea of transcendence, not only in the spiritual sense through meditation – without which we would not be having this conversation – but also in a spatial sense: why should an image be restricted to a page, a square, a canvas?”
This exhibition has been curated in such a way as to place his sensational portraits within the wider context of Levine’s ongoing exploration of light as a medium that both illuminates and releases its subjects. Throughout his career, the majority of his masterpieces were made to be experienced – they exist only in the moment – and what is so powerful about his portaits is that he draws on this, using a myriad of light immersive experiences, to centre the subject. Purity of laser light is being recognised in the healing community, and works like Flower of Light “are intended to operate subtly in that realm”.
The entrance to Light 3.142 is an installation in itself, calibrating the viewer before they step into the gallery. Inside there is a full spectrum of works such as Modulation 1.2, a LED modulation disc, and Sphere 9, which uses blue laser directed through crystal and phosphorescent dye. First created over a decade ago, they have never before been presented as works, but crucially they are examples of what prompted the brilliant sculptor Gordon Young to put Chris Levine forward when curating the commission to that would change the course of his career. Lightness of Being arose from a sitting with HM The Queen for the portrait Equanimity which was commissioned by Jersey Heritage Trust on behalf of the Island of Jersey.
“It was these pieces he had seen which gave him the confidence to put me forward as the artist he thought was most suitable to do a portrait of The Queen in the modern age, to mark the octocentenary of the Jersey Island’s allegiance to The Crown. So now people know Lightness of Being, well I wanted to show the work out of which that was born – that it’s a light thing,” says Levine.
What has been described as a “happy accident” that resulted in Levine’s meditative portrait of the Queen, is better considered in the light of his being in the moment – having the presence of mind to see the pure beauty of the image in front of him with The Queen in repose, and capturing it. Because of his intuitive direction, what began as a very technical and ambitious exercise, resulted in a very transcended and timeless experience. The process involved a high-resolution digital camera moving along a rail taking 200 images over eight seconds.
As the Queen was required to sit still for each take, she closed her eyes between them to rest – and something about that image seemed to say more about his royal subject than any with her looking back at us.
What is it about a portrait of a person who is in the public eye with their eyes closed that connects so powerfully with the public? We have seen so many pictures of the Queen, and so many expressions of Kate Moss in Kate’s world. “It is like we carry each image we have seen of Kate into the next image we see of her.” So there is a visual layering, but just as the lenticular layers multiple frames in a special printing process to give us the 3-D effect – it is really 2-D. Our knowledge of this modern icon is just an accumulation of printed images and not a collection of real 3-D moments.
The optical illusion of a lenticular is achieved through layering of 2-D images that are interlaced together, then a lense that is laminated onto the surface that separates it so that your eye only sees two images at any one time. Those two images are set according to the rules of stereoscopy so that your left and right eye perceive them and you fill it in the rest as 3-D.
Before the lense is laminated onto the images, they are just a series of lines and then the lens pulls it all into focus and you are just looking at one image with each eye. Whilst the technical process was created to emphasise the nature of icon as hyper photographed, the portrait reduces it down to a stillness of one image in repose. One moment – now.
When someone has their eyes open they are looking at you and in some ways reflecting yourself back – but with their eyes closed they cannot see you so they cannot react to you. There is something very intimate about these images – you can linger over them almost voyeuristically – without fear of being seen yourself. You are completely observing. “It’s a more soulful connection with the eyes shut – with them open you get caught in the superficiality of what is going on.” The experience is very different – you are in a presence rather than looking at a portrait.
“In some respects it is trying to get image to transcend image. When I was in art college studying graphic design I was always trying to get things to move off the page or draw out of the border. Why is it that art has to be restricted to four sides and go up on a wall? That is the mode of expression that has to channel through that conduit then it is quite limiting.”
Another aspect of the eyes being closed is that we see a subject transcending the limits of their own sensory perceptions: they are not reacting to anything they see, just what is inside.It is a haunting precursor to how they might be remembered – how they might be immortalised. This particular lenticular of Moss is like an ice box – frozen in time and preserved forever it “puts things on pause” so that we “go beyond the image”.
On the one hand, light illuminates and, on the other, it is uncontainable. “Lasers, modulators, diffractors and LEDs are the sources of elusive works of art that exist for as long as the viewer perceives them,” says Levine.
It is the works displayed beyond the lenticular light boxes that venture deeper into this dichotomy. For example the Modulation 1.6 is a series of individually coloured discs that bleed off into the page – there is no definition to them – and whilst they are completely static they seem to pulse. Modulation 1.2 defies literal observation by continuously colour shifting, changing what we perceive around it in the process.
There is one element of Levine’s work that cannot even be contained within a gallery space – that is off the page, off the scale, like his forthcoming collaboration, Swanlights, with Antony and the Johnsons and the Britten Sinfonia at the Royal Opera House, London. Levine relishes getting back into production and producing communal moments of transcendence, which harks back to his beginnings as a drummer in his band Triangle. Light art that can only be experienced and not captured in a box or a frame to put up on your wall. Art that is literally transformative, a moment that becomes a part of you – so you can take it with you everywhere you go.
This is the premise for his collaboration with the Eden Project and his site immersive laser installation, soon to become mobile through the iy_project, but that is another story.
Personally, I would love to see him do a portrait of Chinese pianist Yundi Li in performance bathed in Levine’s laserlight – in the moment of the moment – probably with his eyes wide shut. Go to Light 3.142 and see it.
by Nico Kos Earle
Chris Levine: Light: 3.142 at The Fine Art Society until June 29
His collaboration Swanlights with Antony and the Johnsons and the Britten Sinfonia is at the Royal Opera House from July 25 – 27
Modulation by Chris Levine (see below)
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