David Chaim Smith has teamed up with the illustrious Fulgur Press to release a monograph of his stunning Kabbalistic work. The tome, entitled, The Sacrificial Universe, is exquisitely crafted and a work of artisanship itself:
As we begin our twentieth year of publishing, we are delighted to announce our first title from an exceptional and highly respected artist. David Chaim Smith has been known to students of kabbalah for more than a decade, but a recent return to art as a vocational practice has brought his work to a wider audience. His first book with us, The Sacrificial Universe, draws upon his experience to present us with a devotional approach to ecstatic visionary mysticism. Ranging from intellectual treatises on sacred geometry, biomorphism and the symbol of the serpent in kabbalistic theory and practise, to a poetic twilight language of ecstatic devotion, The Sacrificial Universe is unlike any other book we have offered to date.
Produced as a lavish small folio with generous margins and a classic typographic style, The Sacrificial Universe presents David’s key artworks of the last four years as full-page images, with the triptychs and quadriptych offered as folding plates. The complex and evocative iconographic symbolism is also explored through commentaries. And yet The Sacrificial Universe is more than a homage to those seventeenth century books of hermetic mysticism. Structured according to the classic kabbalistic text Sefer Yetzirah, The Sacrificial Universe may be approached on three levels (world, year, and soul) to offer the reader a view of gnostic surrender within a vision of the self-consuming nature of phenomena.
The deluxe limited editions have already sold out, but you can pre-order the standard limited edition here. There will also be a book release party at Cavin-Morris Gallery on Thursday, March 23rd from 6-8pm, with a special performance by John Zorn. I shall be there, and hopefully you will be, too.
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