18th January – 15th March 2025

In Seeing Light, Chris Doris, combines a monumental series of Spectrum Paintings with text paintings and explores the optical phenomena of light interacting with matter.

Investigating the luminosity of nothingness, Doris observes its subtle energy as it meets the solidity of human conditioning. The Spectrum paintings approach nothingness as a subtle ground state of being and potential, rather than as a deconstructive, nihilistic void.

These paintings have always been accompanied by content-heavy text or collage works. This strategy makes visible the coexistence of the conditioned, conceptual mind and non-dualistic, empty presence in human consciousness.

The text works are extracted from observing the involuntary narratives of the conditioned mind. Some may be stable aphorisms, some the flux of involuntary thought.

Each Spectrum Painting invites the seeing of what obscures seeing, as well as the seeing of the thing itself.

Chris Doris is based in Mayo and Dublin.

Seeing Light runs until 15th March.

Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.

~ Heart Sutra

Chris Doris’s art synthesies his experiences as a Mindfulness-based psychotherapist and Raj Yoga meditation practitioner for 25 years. His paintings and “relational enquiries” incorporate ways of seeing from meditation and psychotheraputix praxis.

A key tenet of Buddhism is the understanding that things are “empty” of inherent substance. They exist only in interdependence with other things.

The self we take to be a relatively fixed, discrete entity is, “empty” of inherent substance. It is a process not a thing. It constellates moment by moment.

Awareness of this reality opens access to Being, our core, which is regarded as “inherently luminous”, empty and open.

The Raj Yoga meditation tradition Doris practices refers to “nothingness” as the sustaining ground of reality, as do many meditation-based traditions. It can be described as a field of unfolding potential, without limit or conditions.

The Spectrum Series concludes 20 years of Open Paintings. These works originated in the yogic observation of individuals in meditation as the complexity of the self system gives way to the emptiness of Being.

The works in Being Empty posit a relational stance of attuned mutuality and openness. Beyond postmodernism’s useful deconstructions into diffusion and “relative nothingness” lies a deeper and sustaining emptiness - subtle, charged and open. It is synonymous with love.

Opening Event on June 10th, 4pm with opening remarks by Tommy Weir.

Chris Doris’ work has explored the nature of consciousness and transformation for 35 years, through a distinctive interweaving of his psychotherapeutic, art and contemplative practices.

In Being Empty he concludes a 15 year series of large scale Open Paintings.These layered elegant paintings instantiate the view that beyond the nihilistic ‘relative emptiness ‘ resulting from postmodernism’s valid and useful deconstructions, is a neglected but sustaining ‘absolute emptiness ‘.

Paintings on steel and aluminium with their hard surfaces, offer a different relational encounter to the large works on linen. Both invite open, attuned attention. All are informed by the understanding that the self is constructed relationally and that it is empty of inherent substance. It is a process, not a thing. Further, awareness of this allows access to an empty field state of openness and potential.

The paintings are accompanied by a one stroke mop calligraphy drawings which offer trace records of presence oriented to emptiness in flow.