Noah Davis

The first institutional survey of the late Noah Davis (1983–2015) charts the breadth and depth of the American artist’s relentless output. Assembling over 50 works made between 2007 and 2015, the exhibition is organized in a manner that reflects the diverse interests informing Davis’s practice including current affairs, everyday life, family histories, ancient Egyptian cosmologies, the racism of American media, art history, and architecture. Inspired by vernacular sources—from flea market photographs to personal archives—Davis’s fluid painting style questioned complex histories of representation and image-making. Although the body of paintings he produced over a brief creative life was largely figurative, Davis employed unorthodox techniques and rich color palettes to create scenes that feel simultaneously realistic and dreamlike, joyful and melancholic, capturing the contradictory sensations of lived experience.

The exhibition is organized by the Barbican, London and initiated with DAS MINSK, Potsdam. The exhibition is curated by Eleanor Nairne, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art and Head of Department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and former Barbican senior curator, and Wells Fray-Smith, curator, Barbican. The presentation at the Hammer is organized by Aram Moshayedi, independent curator and former Robert Soros Senior Curator, with Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi, former curatorial associate, and Nyah Ginwright, curatorial assistant.

Header image: Noah Davis, Isis, 2009 (detail). Oil and acrylic on linen. 48 × 48 in. (121.9 × 121.9 cm). Mellon Foundation Art Collection. Courtesy of the Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner. Photo: Kerry McFate