Christine Davis

"Euclid/Orchid", 2009. slide projector, orchid, sketchbooks.

A page from Euclid’s “Elements” is projected onto a potted orchid. The plant rests on a stack of blank books and is kept alive by the light of the projector - and intermittent sun. A fragile experiment in photosynthesis, the act of projection is materialized -- it sustains the orchid which in turn forms the image.

"Who's afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?", 2008. slide projector, morpho butterfly

A single blue butterfly is pinned directly to the wall of a museum in the context of an exhibition on art and science. Across the room a slide projector on a stack of blank books projects details of a wonder bread package onto the iridescent wings. The creature becomes a hybrid of known and unknown substances - a source of "wonder". Linking the industrialization of food production to modernism through ideas of abstraction ie. food colouring and monochrome painting, the work explores the intertwined language of art and science.

"ACGT", 1998. Etched steel and thread, 67 x 31.5 in each.

The letters abbreviating nucleotides, A, C, G, T, that map the DNA sequence are individually etched on metal squares. Drawn from a neural (homeobox) sequence the squares are sewn into grids shaped like armor. This work explores a shift in biological science from a mechanical model of blood and guts to one based on communication. Linking knowledge, language and war, for this project the artist worked in a genetic lab, examining microscopic DNA (which looks like spaghetti) and followed its rendering into a string of letters. Focusing on this process of abstracting "the invisible life of life" by first reduction and then recombination, gene splicing is related to film splicing - making the body conform to the economy of the film strip - an animate narrative of inanimate parts - neither porous nor messy. The sequence sewing is ongoing, in pairs, and will be comprised of 20 forms once completed. The artist chose to work with a homeobox sequence (found in humans and animals) as it is a regulator - a sequence that exists solely to inform other parts of the code when to switch on and off.

"Lens", 1995. Hand-blown glass, steel harness, wire, theatrical spot light. 60 in.

Molded directly from a 1970’s Judy, a dressmaker’s dummy is hand-blown out of glass. The singular act of expelled breath creates a form arrested at its moment of inception. Paradoxically the dummy, intended as an instrument of mass production, is imperfectly materialized as a transparent and non-functional object that acquires a life of its own. Conceived from the artist's interest in the history of the automaton, and insistence on probing a relation between animate and inanimate, this work is a reflection upon "L'Ève future," by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.

"Le dictionnaire des inquisiteurs (tombeau)" 1994-95. Installation, light box set into wall of cell shaped room.

The 308 contact lenses of the index (see below) are placed within a lightbox recessed into the wall of a small, cell-like room.

"Le dictionnaire des inquisiteurs", 1992. Twelve light tables, laser etched contact lenses, 111 x 34 x 34 cm.

An index of 308 words laser etched onto a series of coloured contact lenses is divided into pairs (right/left) and organized into 12 chess games that are displayed on light tables arranged in a circle. The words are taken from a dictionary published in Valencia during the Spanish inquisition. Mapped into a new historical relation by the operation of chance and prosthetic appearance the words are vividly modern and not easily dismissed as "of the past." The contact lens is like a skin-film on which trauma is condensed as both process and product - linking truth to the production of the visual. Paradoxically, the word is no longer readable if the lens is worn and, the inscribing laser is blinding if looked at. Like the prisoner in Kafka's "Penal Colony", the judgement is incised on the back of the victim and she/he can feel it but not read it. The work was produced in response to the rise of live televised trials ie. Rodney King and a sense that the artist/viewer is implicated in the process.

"Logos", 1991. Black and white slide projection, satin tufting, gilt frame, rope, pulleys, 203cm x 348cm. Photograph: silver-print, steel rulers, neon light, 46 x 61 cm.

Photographed during a screening of Pasolini’s “Salo,” a still subtitled "il n'ya rien a faire" is projected onto a suspended screen within the gallery. The brilliant white satin tufted surface of the screen melds with the chateau interior and ambiguous action. The work probes the relation between physical and moral space implicit within Pasolini's staging of fascism. Opposite is a small photograph of the artist standing on a book – Sade’s "les cingt vingt jours" opened to the passage the film portrays.
See "Configurations of the Gaze," Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Exhibition Catalogue