Equanimity_2022 70, 2022

Chris Levine   Emerging artists

Chris Levine is a light artist with an expansive and experimental practice. His multi-disciplinary approach harnesses a diverse array of technology with the unyielding intention of revealing the ways in which light is fundamental to human experience. He is driven by a deep-rooted desire to expand perception and sensitively guide the viewer to a meditative engagement with the present moment. His message and his language is light. This spiritually motivated and philosophical approach has allowed him to navigate unchartered territory in new media: he has been at the forefront of exploring how technologies such as holograms and lasers can contribute to the story of art and creative endeavours. 

Levine's ground breaking light-based body of work depicting Queen Elizabeth II is known internationally. In an age of image overload, the artist cut through the noise to make Lightness of Being, a portrait of singular importance. Although he has shown in museums and exhibitions dedicated to portraiture globally, Levine is not a portrait artist in the traditional sense. At the heart of Levine's practice are his immersive light installations which he has endeavoured to take out of the white cube environment into a real world, mass participatory experience. He has created site specific and large scale outdoor light installations in sites as diverse as Durham Cathedral to Hobart Tasmania, at Radio City Hall New York and on the stage at Glastonbury. Continually pushing the boundaries of what light art can do and how it can have a transformative effect on the viewer, his singular ideology pulls the viewer into a greater consciousness through art. 

Levine's work has been included in institutional group exhibitions internationally including: “Other Worldy" at The Museum of Arts and Design in New York, 2011; Digital Darkroom Exhibition at The Annenberg Foundation in Los Angeles 2012; “Queen Art and Image", The National Portrait Gallery, London; 2012 which travelled to National Museum, Cardiff; National Gallery, Scotland; National Museum, Belfast; “Out Of Focus: Photography", Saatchi Gallery, London, 2012; “Hypervisual 1.2", a travelling exhibition with the British Council which was shown in 12 countries worldwide.