Precious Moment (I See Your Spirit)
Jacki Davis | Paul Davis
Presented by The Yard : Williamsburg
December 15, 2023 - March 29, 2024
The Yard: Williamsburg is pleased to present Precious Moment (I See Your Spirit), a two-artist exhibition of new paintings by Jacki Davis and Paul Davis. The couple’s debut duo show together presents 22 transcendental works of acrylic on canvas and paper inspired by alternate dimensions and esoteric phenomena alike, including Near Death and Out of Body Experiences. From symbolic symphonies to outright abstractions, their works explore the divine’s observance of human action on Earth, the forces that greet people after death, and the eternal spirit’s paradoxical impermanence.
Jacki Davis’s decades-long creative career, which spans costume design and curation from Los Angeles to New York, began taking cues from her meditations around 1994, when she began studying spiritual modalities and, eventually, devising her own. Jacki and Paul’s worlds collided decades later, in 2011. The pair bonded over Stoic philosophy, Eastern spiritual doctrines, and art. After their second date, at the MoMA, Jacki surprised Paul with a roll of raw canvas, scissors, and paint. They’ve made art together intermittently ever since, Jacki sharing her expertise in color theory and composition from studying at the College of Santa Fe with Paul, a practicing attorney. His outside perspective infuses her trained practice with new freshness and rigor. “We think differently,” Jacki says of their unconventional partnership, “but both of our life philosophies are rooted in honesty, self-awareness, and authenticity.”
Precious Moment includes 15 symbolic arrangements which Jacki envisioned over the past four years. The show’s earliest piece, a mandala titled “Coherence” (2019), hails from the first body of work she exhibited following a 20 year hiatus from the public eye. The rest of her works in this show are from “We Are All Made of Stars,” an evolving contemplation on humanity’s origins and interdimensional realities. This series started as sculptures of spiritual doppelgangers constructed from porcelain and rare crystal quartz Jacki hand-mines from the Mohawk Valley region. Their forms encapsulate visions of alternate dimensions she’s seen while meditating. Jacki began painting those sculptures in 2022, on view here.
Meanwhile, Precious Moment debuts seven new works by Paul that are equally charged with their own providence — yet also distinctly abstract. Three selections from his new “Skylights'' series open entry points to the Sky, Universe, and Soul, offering viewers a direct portal to mysticism. Four works from his “Elements'' series interpret nature’s essential building blocks to underscore the fragile balance of life on Earth. Together, each artist’s work informs and completes the others’, from Paul’s energetic color fields to Jacki’s skin tone structures. Their palettes play with exuberant accents in The Yard’s polished space.
Overall, the intentional balance across each work and the show at large exemplifies the personal power we all possess to respond rather than react, with tolerance and curiosity, instead of fear and brute force from the ego. These paintings foster a palpable reciprocity that mirrors ancient Indigenous wisdom and shifts the balance of power back towards harmonious union with nature, humanity, and oneself. Side by side, Jacki and Paul’s unique styles join forces to celebrate the many simple moments that abound in earthly and cosmic relationships alike, all of which fill humankind with unbridled love for existence — the most powerful, transformative frequency. As the wider world faces perilous, discordant entropy, Precious Moment encourages reflection and gratitude for the universal experiences which subtly influence us all, forging life-sustaining senses of connection here and in the afterworld beyond.
— Vittoria Benzine