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Can you situate Noah Davis within the context of the Barbican and this exhibition?
Noah Davis is one of the most compelling painters to emerge in the last decades, creating an exuberant body of figurative work that explores the emotional textures of everyday life. Through his visceral handling of paint, he shows us how it feels to encounter the world around us in all its complex ambiguity, tenderness, joy and tragedy. The impact of his expansive practice, alongside his legacy as a curator and community-builder, continues to resonate with artists and audiences alike. Yet, opportunities to see his work have remained rare since his untimely death in 2015. This exhibition, the artist’s first institutional retrospective, is a timely and urgent remedy.
Here, at the Barbican, the retrospective is positioned as the latest in a line of monographic exhibitions that explore the nuances of artists’ careers and assert their significance in the landscape of 20th century and contemporary artmaking: think Lee Krasner, Jean Dubuffet and Carolee Schneemann. In this exhibition, we trace eight years of Noah Davis’s creative practice – from 2007, when he first started to build his reputation as a figurative painter in Los Angeles, to the heartbreakingly intimate paintings he made in the month before he died in 2015. Gesturing to the expansive nature of his practice, we also highlight his activities as a curator, which culminated in the Underground Museum, an art space that he co-founded in Los Angeles in 2012 that was free and open to all.
Can you describe your experience curating this exhibition? What was your focus when designing its structure?
It has been an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to spend so much time near Davis’s work. He painted quickly; you can feel his direct relationship to the canvases when you stand before them. It’s there in the expressive brushstrokes, the veils of thinly washed colour and the drips of paint that dance across their surfaces. He also paints his figures so that you can’t help but feel a physical and emotional connection to them. His scenes are emotive and rich in suggestion. They work on you and invite us to return to them repeatedly. I hope that this is something that visitors will also experience when they come to the exhibition and encounter Davis’s works in the flesh.
As this is the first retrospective of Davis’s practice, we have arranged the exhibition in a broadly chronological structure. The intention is for visitors to witness his experimental approach to painting and subject matter across the eight years represented as he moves between painting methods, palettes, and compositions. Within this chronology, we have also highlighted key themes and motifs that informed his artmaking, reflecting the diversity of references he drew upon and reimagined within his painterly language, from photography, film and reality daytime television to ancient Egypt, modernist architecture and art history.
What is your favourite piece in the exhibition?
One of my favourite works is The Conductor (2014), which belongs to Davis’s Pueblo del Rio series, where he imagines what culture might look like within the titular inner-city neighbourhood of Los Angeles. A conductor, dressed in a white shirt and tails, appears before a house, his baton poised in the air as if ready to usher in a swell of music from an unseen orchestra. A sea of dappled, vibrant blue brushstrokes dance around the scene so that it almost dissolves in a push-and-pull between image and abstraction. I find this work highly atmospheric and also enjoy the ambiguity Davis leaves for us in the detail of the conductor’s pointed toes – is the figure standing on the two chairs outside the house, or is he levitating before us, buoyed by the uplifting power of culture in which the artist so believed?
Can you situate Noah Davis within the context of the Barbican and this exhibition?
Noah Davis is one of the most compelling painters to emerge in the last decades, creating an exuberant body of figurative work that explores the emotional textures of everyday life. Through his visceral handling of paint, he shows us how it feels to encounter the world around us in all its complex ambiguity, tenderness, joy and tragedy. The impact of his expansive practice, alongside his legacy as a curator and community-builder, continues to resonate with artists and audiences alike. Yet, opportunities to see his work have remained rare since his untimely death in 2015. This exhibition, the artist’s first institutional retrospective, is a timely and urgent remedy.
Here, at the Barbican, the retrospective is positioned as the latest in a line of monographic exhibitions that explore the nuances of artists’ careers and assert their significance in the landscape of 20th century and contemporary artmaking: think Lee Krasner, Jean Dubuffet and Carolee Schneemann. In this exhibition, we trace eight years of Noah Davis’s creative practice – from 2007, when he first started to build his reputation as a figurative painter in Los Angeles, to the heartbreakingly intimate paintings he made in the month before he died in 2015. Gesturing to the expansive nature of his practice, we also highlight his activities as a curator, which culminated in the Underground Museum, an art space that he co-founded in Los Angeles in 2012 that was free and open to all.
Can you describe your experience curating this exhibition? What was your focus when designing its structure?
It has been an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to spend so much time near Davis’s work. He painted quickly; you can feel his direct relationship to the canvases when you stand before them. It’s there in the expressive brushstrokes, the veils of thinly washed colour and the drips of paint that dance across their surfaces. He also paints his figures so that you can’t help but feel a physical and emotional connection to them. His scenes are emotive and rich in suggestion. They work on you and invite us to return to them repeatedly. I hope that this is something that visitors will also experience when they come to the exhibition and encounter Davis’s works in the flesh.
As this is the first retrospective of Davis’s practice, we have arranged the exhibition in a broadly chronological structure. The intention is for visitors to witness his experimental approach to painting and subject matter across the eight years represented as he moves between painting methods, palettes, and compositions. Within this chronology, we have also highlighted key themes and motifs that informed his artmaking, reflecting the diversity of references he drew upon and reimagined within his painterly language, from photography, film and reality daytime television to ancient Egypt, modernist architecture and art history.
What is your favourite piece in the exhibition?
One of my favourite works is The Conductor (2014), which belongs to Davis’s Pueblo del Rio series, where he imagines what culture might look like within the titular inner-city neighbourhood of Los Angeles. A conductor, dressed in a white shirt and tails, appears before a house, his baton poised in the air as if ready to usher in a swell of music from an unseen orchestra. A sea of dappled, vibrant blue brushstrokes dance around the scene so that it almost dissolves in a push-and-pull between image and abstraction. I find this work highly atmospheric and also enjoy the ambiguity Davis leaves for us in the detail of the conductor’s pointed toes – is the figure standing on the two chairs outside the house, or is he levitating before us, buoyed by the uplifting power of culture in which the artist so believed?
Can you situate Noah Davis within the context of the Barbican and this exhibition?
Noah Davis is one of the most compelling painters to emerge in the last decades, creating an exuberant body of figurative work that explores the emotional textures of everyday life. Through his visceral handling of paint, he shows us how it feels to encounter the world around us in all its complex ambiguity, tenderness, joy and tragedy. The impact of his expansive practice, alongside his legacy as a curator and community-builder, continues to resonate with artists and audiences alike. Yet, opportunities to see his work have remained rare since his untimely death in 2015. This exhibition, the artist’s first institutional retrospective, is a timely and urgent remedy.
Here, at the Barbican, the retrospective is positioned as the latest in a line of monographic exhibitions that explore the nuances of artists’ careers and assert their significance in the landscape of 20th century and contemporary artmaking: think Lee Krasner, Jean Dubuffet and Carolee Schneemann. In this exhibition, we trace eight years of Noah Davis’s creative practice – from 2007, when he first started to build his reputation as a figurative painter in Los Angeles, to the heartbreakingly intimate paintings he made in the month before he died in 2015. Gesturing to the expansive nature of his practice, we also highlight his activities as a curator, which culminated in the Underground Museum, an art space that he co-founded in Los Angeles in 2012 that was free and open to all.
Can you describe your experience curating this exhibition? What was your focus when designing its structure?
It has been an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to spend so much time near Davis’s work. He painted quickly; you can feel his direct relationship to the canvases when you stand before them. It’s there in the expressive brushstrokes, the veils of thinly washed colour and the drips of paint that dance across their surfaces. He also paints his figures so that you can’t help but feel a physical and emotional connection to them. His scenes are emotive and rich in suggestion. They work on you and invite us to return to them repeatedly. I hope that this is something that visitors will also experience when they come to the exhibition and encounter Davis’s works in the flesh.
As this is the first retrospective of Davis’s practice, we have arranged the exhibition in a broadly chronological structure. The intention is for visitors to witness his experimental approach to painting and subject matter across the eight years represented as he moves between painting methods, palettes, and compositions. Within this chronology, we have also highlighted key themes and motifs that informed his artmaking, reflecting the diversity of references he drew upon and reimagined within his painterly language, from photography, film and reality daytime television to ancient Egypt, modernist architecture and art history.
What is your favourite piece in the exhibition?
One of my favourite works is The Conductor (2014), which belongs to Davis’s Pueblo del Rio series, where he imagines what culture might look like within the titular inner-city neighbourhood of Los Angeles. A conductor, dressed in a white shirt and tails, appears before a house, his baton poised in the air as if ready to usher in a swell of music from an unseen orchestra. A sea of dappled, vibrant blue brushstrokes dance around the scene so that it almost dissolves in a push-and-pull between image and abstraction. I find this work highly atmospheric and also enjoy the ambiguity Davis leaves for us in the detail of the conductor’s pointed toes – is the figure standing on the two chairs outside the house, or is he levitating before us, buoyed by the uplifting power of culture in which the artist so believed?
Can you situate Noah Davis within the context of the Barbican and this exhibition?
Noah Davis is one of the most compelling painters to emerge in the last decades, creating an exuberant body of figurative work that explores the emotional textures of everyday life. Through his visceral handling of paint, he shows us how it feels to encounter the world around us in all its complex ambiguity, tenderness, joy and tragedy. The impact of his expansive practice, alongside his legacy as a curator and community-builder, continues to resonate with artists and audiences alike. Yet, opportunities to see his work have remained rare since his untimely death in 2015. This exhibition, the artist’s first institutional retrospective, is a timely and urgent remedy.
Here, at the Barbican, the retrospective is positioned as the latest in a line of monographic exhibitions that explore the nuances of artists’ careers and assert their significance in the landscape of 20th century and contemporary artmaking: think Lee Krasner, Jean Dubuffet and Carolee Schneemann. In this exhibition, we trace eight years of Noah Davis’s creative practice – from 2007, when he first started to build his reputation as a figurative painter in Los Angeles, to the heartbreakingly intimate paintings he made in the month before he died in 2015. Gesturing to the expansive nature of his practice, we also highlight his activities as a curator, which culminated in the Underground Museum, an art space that he co-founded in Los Angeles in 2012 that was free and open to all.
Can you describe your experience curating this exhibition? What was your focus when designing its structure?
It has been an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to spend so much time near Davis’s work. He painted quickly; you can feel his direct relationship to the canvases when you stand before them. It’s there in the expressive brushstrokes, the veils of thinly washed colour and the drips of paint that dance across their surfaces. He also paints his figures so that you can’t help but feel a physical and emotional connection to them. His scenes are emotive and rich in suggestion. They work on you and invite us to return to them repeatedly. I hope that this is something that visitors will also experience when they come to the exhibition and encounter Davis’s works in the flesh.
As this is the first retrospective of Davis’s practice, we have arranged the exhibition in a broadly chronological structure. The intention is for visitors to witness his experimental approach to painting and subject matter across the eight years represented as he moves between painting methods, palettes, and compositions. Within this chronology, we have also highlighted key themes and motifs that informed his artmaking, reflecting the diversity of references he drew upon and reimagined within his painterly language, from photography, film and reality daytime television to ancient Egypt, modernist architecture and art history.
What is your favourite piece in the exhibition?
One of my favourite works is The Conductor (2014), which belongs to Davis’s Pueblo del Rio series, where he imagines what culture might look like within the titular inner-city neighbourhood of Los Angeles. A conductor, dressed in a white shirt and tails, appears before a house, his baton poised in the air as if ready to usher in a swell of music from an unseen orchestra. A sea of dappled, vibrant blue brushstrokes dance around the scene so that it almost dissolves in a push-and-pull between image and abstraction. I find this work highly atmospheric and also enjoy the ambiguity Davis leaves for us in the detail of the conductor’s pointed toes – is the figure standing on the two chairs outside the house, or is he levitating before us, buoyed by the uplifting power of culture in which the artist so believed?
Can you situate Noah Davis within the context of the Barbican and this exhibition?
Noah Davis is one of the most compelling painters to emerge in the last decades, creating an exuberant body of figurative work that explores the emotional textures of everyday life. Through his visceral handling of paint, he shows us how it feels to encounter the world around us in all its complex ambiguity, tenderness, joy and tragedy. The impact of his expansive practice, alongside his legacy as a curator and community-builder, continues to resonate with artists and audiences alike. Yet, opportunities to see his work have remained rare since his untimely death in 2015. This exhibition, the artist’s first institutional retrospective, is a timely and urgent remedy.
Here, at the Barbican, the retrospective is positioned as the latest in a line of monographic exhibitions that explore the nuances of artists’ careers and assert their significance in the landscape of 20th century and contemporary artmaking: think Lee Krasner, Jean Dubuffet and Carolee Schneemann. In this exhibition, we trace eight years of Noah Davis’s creative practice – from 2007, when he first started to build his reputation as a figurative painter in Los Angeles, to the heartbreakingly intimate paintings he made in the month before he died in 2015. Gesturing to the expansive nature of his practice, we also highlight his activities as a curator, which culminated in the Underground Museum, an art space that he co-founded in Los Angeles in 2012 that was free and open to all.
Can you describe your experience curating this exhibition? What was your focus when designing its structure?
It has been an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to spend so much time near Davis’s work. He painted quickly; you can feel his direct relationship to the canvases when you stand before them. It’s there in the expressive brushstrokes, the veils of thinly washed colour and the drips of paint that dance across their surfaces. He also paints his figures so that you can’t help but feel a physical and emotional connection to them. His scenes are emotive and rich in suggestion. They work on you and invite us to return to them repeatedly. I hope that this is something that visitors will also experience when they come to the exhibition and encounter Davis’s works in the flesh.
As this is the first retrospective of Davis’s practice, we have arranged the exhibition in a broadly chronological structure. The intention is for visitors to witness his experimental approach to painting and subject matter across the eight years represented as he moves between painting methods, palettes, and compositions. Within this chronology, we have also highlighted key themes and motifs that informed his artmaking, reflecting the diversity of references he drew upon and reimagined within his painterly language, from photography, film and reality daytime television to ancient Egypt, modernist architecture and art history.
What is your favourite piece in the exhibition?
One of my favourite works is The Conductor (2014), which belongs to Davis’s Pueblo del Rio series, where he imagines what culture might look like within the titular inner-city neighbourhood of Los Angeles. A conductor, dressed in a white shirt and tails, appears before a house, his baton poised in the air as if ready to usher in a swell of music from an unseen orchestra. A sea of dappled, vibrant blue brushstrokes dance around the scene so that it almost dissolves in a push-and-pull between image and abstraction. I find this work highly atmospheric and also enjoy the ambiguity Davis leaves for us in the detail of the conductor’s pointed toes – is the figure standing on the two chairs outside the house, or is he levitating before us, buoyed by the uplifting power of culture in which the artist so believed?
Can you situate Noah Davis within the context of the Barbican and this exhibition?
Noah Davis is one of the most compelling painters to emerge in the last decades, creating an exuberant body of figurative work that explores the emotional textures of everyday life. Through his visceral handling of paint, he shows us how it feels to encounter the world around us in all its complex ambiguity, tenderness, joy and tragedy. The impact of his expansive practice, alongside his legacy as a curator and community-builder, continues to resonate with artists and audiences alike. Yet, opportunities to see his work have remained rare since his untimely death in 2015. This exhibition, the artist’s first institutional retrospective, is a timely and urgent remedy.
Here, at the Barbican, the retrospective is positioned as the latest in a line of monographic exhibitions that explore the nuances of artists’ careers and assert their significance in the landscape of 20th century and contemporary artmaking: think Lee Krasner, Jean Dubuffet and Carolee Schneemann. In this exhibition, we trace eight years of Noah Davis’s creative practice – from 2007, when he first started to build his reputation as a figurative painter in Los Angeles, to the heartbreakingly intimate paintings he made in the month before he died in 2015. Gesturing to the expansive nature of his practice, we also highlight his activities as a curator, which culminated in the Underground Museum, an art space that he co-founded in Los Angeles in 2012 that was free and open to all.
Can you describe your experience curating this exhibition? What was your focus when designing its structure?
It has been an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to spend so much time near Davis’s work. He painted quickly; you can feel his direct relationship to the canvases when you stand before them. It’s there in the expressive brushstrokes, the veils of thinly washed colour and the drips of paint that dance across their surfaces. He also paints his figures so that you can’t help but feel a physical and emotional connection to them. His scenes are emotive and rich in suggestion. They work on you and invite us to return to them repeatedly. I hope that this is something that visitors will also experience when they come to the exhibition and encounter Davis’s works in the flesh.
As this is the first retrospective of Davis’s practice, we have arranged the exhibition in a broadly chronological structure. The intention is for visitors to witness his experimental approach to painting and subject matter across the eight years represented as he moves between painting methods, palettes, and compositions. Within this chronology, we have also highlighted key themes and motifs that informed his artmaking, reflecting the diversity of references he drew upon and reimagined within his painterly language, from photography, film and reality daytime television to ancient Egypt, modernist architecture and art history.
What is your favourite piece in the exhibition?
One of my favourite works is The Conductor (2014), which belongs to Davis’s Pueblo del Rio series, where he imagines what culture might look like within the titular inner-city neighbourhood of Los Angeles. A conductor, dressed in a white shirt and tails, appears before a house, his baton poised in the air as if ready to usher in a swell of music from an unseen orchestra. A sea of dappled, vibrant blue brushstrokes dance around the scene so that it almost dissolves in a push-and-pull between image and abstraction. I find this work highly atmospheric and also enjoy the ambiguity Davis leaves for us in the detail of the conductor’s pointed toes – is the figure standing on the two chairs outside the house, or is he levitating before us, buoyed by the uplifting power of culture in which the artist so believed?
Can you situate Noah Davis within the context of the Barbican and this exhibition?
Noah Davis is one of the most compelling painters to emerge in the last decades, creating an exuberant body of figurative work that explores the emotional textures of everyday life. Through his visceral handling of paint, he shows us how it feels to encounter the world around us in all its complex ambiguity, tenderness, joy and tragedy. The impact of his expansive practice, alongside his legacy as a curator and community-builder, continues to resonate with artists and audiences alike. Yet, opportunities to see his work have remained rare since his untimely death in 2015. This exhibition, the artist’s first institutional retrospective, is a timely and urgent remedy.
Here, at the Barbican, the retrospective is positioned as the latest in a line of monographic exhibitions that explore the nuances of artists’ careers and assert their significance in the landscape of 20th century and contemporary artmaking: think Lee Krasner, Jean Dubuffet and Carolee Schneemann. In this exhibition, we trace eight years of Noah Davis’s creative practice – from 2007, when he first started to build his reputation as a figurative painter in Los Angeles, to the heartbreakingly intimate paintings he made in the month before he died in 2015. Gesturing to the expansive nature of his practice, we also highlight his activities as a curator, which culminated in the Underground Museum, an art space that he co-founded in Los Angeles in 2012 that was free and open to all.
Can you describe your experience curating this exhibition? What was your focus when designing its structure?
It has been an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to spend so much time near Davis’s work. He painted quickly; you can feel his direct relationship to the canvases when you stand before them. It’s there in the expressive brushstrokes, the veils of thinly washed colour and the drips of paint that dance across their surfaces. He also paints his figures so that you can’t help but feel a physical and emotional connection to them. His scenes are emotive and rich in suggestion. They work on you and invite us to return to them repeatedly. I hope that this is something that visitors will also experience when they come to the exhibition and encounter Davis’s works in the flesh.
As this is the first retrospective of Davis’s practice, we have arranged the exhibition in a broadly chronological structure. The intention is for visitors to witness his experimental approach to painting and subject matter across the eight years represented as he moves between painting methods, palettes, and compositions. Within this chronology, we have also highlighted key themes and motifs that informed his artmaking, reflecting the diversity of references he drew upon and reimagined within his painterly language, from photography, film and reality daytime television to ancient Egypt, modernist architecture and art history.
What is your favourite piece in the exhibition?
One of my favourite works is The Conductor (2014), which belongs to Davis’s Pueblo del Rio series, where he imagines what culture might look like within the titular inner-city neighbourhood of Los Angeles. A conductor, dressed in a white shirt and tails, appears before a house, his baton poised in the air as if ready to usher in a swell of music from an unseen orchestra. A sea of dappled, vibrant blue brushstrokes dance around the scene so that it almost dissolves in a push-and-pull between image and abstraction. I find this work highly atmospheric and also enjoy the ambiguity Davis leaves for us in the detail of the conductor’s pointed toes – is the figure standing on the two chairs outside the house, or is he levitating before us, buoyed by the uplifting power of culture in which the artist so believed?
Can you situate Noah Davis within the context of the Barbican and this exhibition?
Noah Davis is one of the most compelling painters to emerge in the last decades, creating an exuberant body of figurative work that explores the emotional textures of everyday life. Through his visceral handling of paint, he shows us how it feels to encounter the world around us in all its complex ambiguity, tenderness, joy and tragedy. The impact of his expansive practice, alongside his legacy as a curator and community-builder, continues to resonate with artists and audiences alike. Yet, opportunities to see his work have remained rare since his untimely death in 2015. This exhibition, the artist’s first institutional retrospective, is a timely and urgent remedy.
Here, at the Barbican, the retrospective is positioned as the latest in a line of monographic exhibitions that explore the nuances of artists’ careers and assert their significance in the landscape of 20th century and contemporary artmaking: think Lee Krasner, Jean Dubuffet and Carolee Schneemann. In this exhibition, we trace eight years of Noah Davis’s creative practice – from 2007, when he first started to build his reputation as a figurative painter in Los Angeles, to the heartbreakingly intimate paintings he made in the month before he died in 2015. Gesturing to the expansive nature of his practice, we also highlight his activities as a curator, which culminated in the Underground Museum, an art space that he co-founded in Los Angeles in 2012 that was free and open to all.
Can you describe your experience curating this exhibition? What was your focus when designing its structure?
It has been an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to spend so much time near Davis’s work. He painted quickly; you can feel his direct relationship to the canvases when you stand before them. It’s there in the expressive brushstrokes, the veils of thinly washed colour and the drips of paint that dance across their surfaces. He also paints his figures so that you can’t help but feel a physical and emotional connection to them. His scenes are emotive and rich in suggestion. They work on you and invite us to return to them repeatedly. I hope that this is something that visitors will also experience when they come to the exhibition and encounter Davis’s works in the flesh.
As this is the first retrospective of Davis’s practice, we have arranged the exhibition in a broadly chronological structure. The intention is for visitors to witness his experimental approach to painting and subject matter across the eight years represented as he moves between painting methods, palettes, and compositions. Within this chronology, we have also highlighted key themes and motifs that informed his artmaking, reflecting the diversity of references he drew upon and reimagined within his painterly language, from photography, film and reality daytime television to ancient Egypt, modernist architecture and art history.
What is your favourite piece in the exhibition?
One of my favourite works is The Conductor (2014), which belongs to Davis’s Pueblo del Rio series, where he imagines what culture might look like within the titular inner-city neighbourhood of Los Angeles. A conductor, dressed in a white shirt and tails, appears before a house, his baton poised in the air as if ready to usher in a swell of music from an unseen orchestra. A sea of dappled, vibrant blue brushstrokes dance around the scene so that it almost dissolves in a push-and-pull between image and abstraction. I find this work highly atmospheric and also enjoy the ambiguity Davis leaves for us in the detail of the conductor’s pointed toes – is the figure standing on the two chairs outside the house, or is he levitating before us, buoyed by the uplifting power of culture in which the artist so believed?
Can you situate Noah Davis within the context of the Barbican and this exhibition?
Noah Davis is one of the most compelling painters to emerge in the last decades, creating an exuberant body of figurative work that explores the emotional textures of everyday life. Through his visceral handling of paint, he shows us how it feels to encounter the world around us in all its complex ambiguity, tenderness, joy and tragedy. The impact of his expansive practice, alongside his legacy as a curator and community-builder, continues to resonate with artists and audiences alike. Yet, opportunities to see his work have remained rare since his untimely death in 2015. This exhibition, the artist’s first institutional retrospective, is a timely and urgent remedy.
Here, at the Barbican, the retrospective is positioned as the latest in a line of monographic exhibitions that explore the nuances of artists’ careers and assert their significance in the landscape of 20th century and contemporary artmaking: think Lee Krasner, Jean Dubuffet and Carolee Schneemann. In this exhibition, we trace eight years of Noah Davis’s creative practice – from 2007, when he first started to build his reputation as a figurative painter in Los Angeles, to the heartbreakingly intimate paintings he made in the month before he died in 2015. Gesturing to the expansive nature of his practice, we also highlight his activities as a curator, which culminated in the Underground Museum, an art space that he co-founded in Los Angeles in 2012 that was free and open to all.
Can you describe your experience curating this exhibition? What was your focus when designing its structure?
It has been an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to spend so much time near Davis’s work. He painted quickly; you can feel his direct relationship to the canvases when you stand before them. It’s there in the expressive brushstrokes, the veils of thinly washed colour and the drips of paint that dance across their surfaces. He also paints his figures so that you can’t help but feel a physical and emotional connection to them. His scenes are emotive and rich in suggestion. They work on you and invite us to return to them repeatedly. I hope that this is something that visitors will also experience when they come to the exhibition and encounter Davis’s works in the flesh.
As this is the first retrospective of Davis’s practice, we have arranged the exhibition in a broadly chronological structure. The intention is for visitors to witness his experimental approach to painting and subject matter across the eight years represented as he moves between painting methods, palettes, and compositions. Within this chronology, we have also highlighted key themes and motifs that informed his artmaking, reflecting the diversity of references he drew upon and reimagined within his painterly language, from photography, film and reality daytime television to ancient Egypt, modernist architecture and art history.
What is your favourite piece in the exhibition?
One of my favourite works is The Conductor (2014), which belongs to Davis’s Pueblo del Rio series, where he imagines what culture might look like within the titular inner-city neighbourhood of Los Angeles. A conductor, dressed in a white shirt and tails, appears before a house, his baton poised in the air as if ready to usher in a swell of music from an unseen orchestra. A sea of dappled, vibrant blue brushstrokes dance around the scene so that it almost dissolves in a push-and-pull between image and abstraction. I find this work highly atmospheric and also enjoy the ambiguity Davis leaves for us in the detail of the conductor’s pointed toes – is the figure standing on the two chairs outside the house, or is he levitating before us, buoyed by the uplifting power of culture in which the artist so believed?
Can you situate Noah Davis within the context of the Barbican and this exhibition?
Noah Davis is one of the most compelling painters to emerge in the last decades, creating an exuberant body of figurative work that explores the emotional textures of everyday life. Through his visceral handling of paint, he shows us how it feels to encounter the world around us in all its complex ambiguity, tenderness, joy and tragedy. The impact of his expansive practice, alongside his legacy as a curator and community-builder, continues to resonate with artists and audiences alike. Yet, opportunities to see his work have remained rare since his untimely death in 2015. This exhibition, the artist’s first institutional retrospective, is a timely and urgent remedy.
Here, at the Barbican, the retrospective is positioned as the latest in a line of monographic exhibitions that explore the nuances of artists’ careers and assert their significance in the landscape of 20th century and contemporary artmaking: think Lee Krasner, Jean Dubuffet and Carolee Schneemann. In this exhibition, we trace eight years of Noah Davis’s creative practice – from 2007, when he first started to build his reputation as a figurative painter in Los Angeles, to the heartbreakingly intimate paintings he made in the month before he died in 2015. Gesturing to the expansive nature of his practice, we also highlight his activities as a curator, which culminated in the Underground Museum, an art space that he co-founded in Los Angeles in 2012 that was free and open to all.
Can you describe your experience curating this exhibition? What was your focus when designing its structure?
It has been an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to spend so much time near Davis’s work. He painted quickly; you can feel his direct relationship to the canvases when you stand before them. It’s there in the expressive brushstrokes, the veils of thinly washed colour and the drips of paint that dance across their surfaces. He also paints his figures so that you can’t help but feel a physical and emotional connection to them. His scenes are emotive and rich in suggestion. They work on you and invite us to return to them repeatedly. I hope that this is something that visitors will also experience when they come to the exhibition and encounter Davis’s works in the flesh.
As this is the first retrospective of Davis’s practice, we have arranged the exhibition in a broadly chronological structure. The intention is for visitors to witness his experimental approach to painting and subject matter across the eight years represented as he moves between painting methods, palettes, and compositions. Within this chronology, we have also highlighted key themes and motifs that informed his artmaking, reflecting the diversity of references he drew upon and reimagined within his painterly language, from photography, film and reality daytime television to ancient Egypt, modernist architecture and art history.
What is your favourite piece in the exhibition?
One of my favourite works is The Conductor (2014), which belongs to Davis’s Pueblo del Rio series, where he imagines what culture might look like within the titular inner-city neighbourhood of Los Angeles. A conductor, dressed in a white shirt and tails, appears before a house, his baton poised in the air as if ready to usher in a swell of music from an unseen orchestra. A sea of dappled, vibrant blue brushstrokes dance around the scene so that it almost dissolves in a push-and-pull between image and abstraction. I find this work highly atmospheric and also enjoy the ambiguity Davis leaves for us in the detail of the conductor’s pointed toes – is the figure standing on the two chairs outside the house, or is he levitating before us, buoyed by the uplifting power of culture in which the artist so believed?
Can you situate Noah Davis within the context of the Barbican and this exhibition?
Noah Davis is one of the most compelling painters to emerge in the last decades, creating an exuberant body of figurative work that explores the emotional textures of everyday life. Through his visceral handling of paint, he shows us how it feels to encounter the world around us in all its complex ambiguity, tenderness, joy and tragedy. The impact of his expansive practice, alongside his legacy as a curator and community-builder, continues to resonate with artists and audiences alike. Yet, opportunities to see his work have remained rare since his untimely death in 2015. This exhibition, the artist’s first institutional retrospective, is a timely and urgent remedy.
Here, at the Barbican, the retrospective is positioned as the latest in a line of monographic exhibitions that explore the nuances of artists’ careers and assert their significance in the landscape of 20th century and contemporary artmaking: think Lee Krasner, Jean Dubuffet and Carolee Schneemann. In this exhibition, we trace eight years of Noah Davis’s creative practice – from 2007, when he first started to build his reputation as a figurative painter in Los Angeles, to the heartbreakingly intimate paintings he made in the month before he died in 2015. Gesturing to the expansive nature of his practice, we also highlight his activities as a curator, which culminated in the Underground Museum, an art space that he co-founded in Los Angeles in 2012 that was free and open to all.
Can you describe your experience curating this exhibition? What was your focus when designing its structure?
It has been an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to spend so much time near Davis’s work. He painted quickly; you can feel his direct relationship to the canvases when you stand before them. It’s there in the expressive brushstrokes, the veils of thinly washed colour and the drips of paint that dance across their surfaces. He also paints his figures so that you can’t help but feel a physical and emotional connection to them. His scenes are emotive and rich in suggestion. They work on you and invite us to return to them repeatedly. I hope that this is something that visitors will also experience when they come to the exhibition and encounter Davis’s works in the flesh.
As this is the first retrospective of Davis’s practice, we have arranged the exhibition in a broadly chronological structure. The intention is for visitors to witness his experimental approach to painting and subject matter across the eight years represented as he moves between painting methods, palettes, and compositions. Within this chronology, we have also highlighted key themes and motifs that informed his artmaking, reflecting the diversity of references he drew upon and reimagined within his painterly language, from photography, film and reality daytime television to ancient Egypt, modernist architecture and art history.
What is your favourite piece in the exhibition?
One of my favourite works is The Conductor (2014), which belongs to Davis’s Pueblo del Rio series, where he imagines what culture might look like within the titular inner-city neighbourhood of Los Angeles. A conductor, dressed in a white shirt and tails, appears before a house, his baton poised in the air as if ready to usher in a swell of music from an unseen orchestra. A sea of dappled, vibrant blue brushstrokes dance around the scene so that it almost dissolves in a push-and-pull between image and abstraction. I find this work highly atmospheric and also enjoy the ambiguity Davis leaves for us in the detail of the conductor’s pointed toes – is the figure standing on the two chairs outside the house, or is he levitating before us, buoyed by the uplifting power of culture in which the artist so believed?
