Noah Davis Survey to Travel the World From September

Works by the painter best known for atmospheric depictions of Black life will be shown in Potsdam, Germany, before heading to London and L.A. next year.

Over his brief, eight-year career, Noah Davis produced more than 400 paintings, ranging from representational to surreal. His interpretations of Black life went beyond portraiture; tender and emotive, they reflect the artist's need to represent the people around him.

Davis's first museum survey opens at DAS MINSK in Germany this September with a selection of more than 50 works. It will travel to London's Barbican and and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2025, bringing his oeuvre to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

'Noah Davis was working figuratively at a pivotal moment in American history—the first iPhone was released in 2007, Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, and the United States—like many countries around the world—entered into a Global Recession,' said Wells Fray-Smith and Eleanor Nairne, the co-curators of the show at the Barbican.

'Against this backdrop, he created paintings that expressed his singular vision to present a range of Black Life, blending the real and surreal to reassert the Black figure in the canon of Western painting,' they said.

The exhibition follows Davis's career retrospective at David Zwirner, New York, in 2020. The gallery, which represents the artist's estate, worked with Los Angeles MOCA curator Helen Molesworth to re-create an installation modelled after the offices of the Underground Museum Davis founded with his wife, artist Karon Davis, in 2012. The Museum, which closed in 2022, aimed to bring museum-grade art within walking distance of Los Angeles' Arlington Heights, a predominantly Black and Latinx neighbourhood.

Then, Davis's request to borrow artworks from local museums was mostly refused. Molesworth, introduced by the artist's brother, the filmmaker Kahlil Joseph, later agreed to exhibit MOCA artworks at the Underground Museum. Davis was diagnosed with cancer shortly after, passing away the day the MOCA collaboration opened in 2015.

According to his brother, Davis started painting at 17. He studied briefly at Cooper Union in New York without graduating, moving to Los Angeles in 2004, where he continued his studio practice while working at MOCA's bookshop.

His scenes drew from myriad sources—from found photographs to domestic surroundings, art history, literature, and music. Stylistic influences ranging widely too, from Marlene Dumas and Luc Tuymans to American painters Mark Rothko and Fairfield Porter.

'His paintings draw on memories, his own imagination, second-hand images, history of art, film, music and literature, all of which are transformed into compositions that move between a range of figurative styles,' said Fray-Smith and Nairne.

'They are containers for feeling—seeming, often at once, strange and familiar, empty yet full of action, beautiful yet melancholic, and filled with social commentary.'

The curators hoped audiences would 'come to experience the full range of Davis's brilliance in painting, community building, and his deep feeling for people.' —[O]