In his short life, Noah Davis made a huge difference with his art. The Seattle-born artist seemed destined to be an artist from a young age; his older brother, the filmmaker Kahlil Joseph, said by the age of 17 Davis had his own studio. He studied for a time at the Cooper Union, but did not graduate and moved to Los Angeles in 2004, where he began working in the MOCA bookstore. He first exhibited his paintings in 2007, quickly gaining a reputation for his elegiac, soft and melancholy-infused portraits, dreamlike and always conveying an immense feeling of dignity and care towards his subjects.
In 2012, Davis was already well-established, and together with his wife, sculptor Karon Davis, founded the Underground Museum, in Arlington Heights. It became a cultural hub and meeting point for many artists, curators, musicians and makers, hosting screenings, events and exhibitions. The final exhibition at the Undeground Museum was dedicated to Davis’ paintings, curated by Helen Molesworth, in 2022, seven years after his death from cancer in 2015 aged just 32.
Davis’ work has had an enormous impact, not only for his emotive, original style of painting but the inventiveness and potency of the scenes he depicted. Merging abstract and realistic modes, he created something unique. Now at last audiences in the UK have the chance to see Davis’ works in this retrospective, which includes more than fifty works, bound by the desire to ‘represent the people around me’, as the artist once put it. Don’t miss it.
