Noah Davis

David Zwirner is pleased to present a selection of works on paper by American artist Noah Davis (1983–2015) at the gallery’s East 69th Street location in New York, the first exhibition to focus on this significant and generative area of his practice. Curated by Davis’s widow, the artist Karon Davis, this intimate grouping of works will provide insight into the wide-ranging interests, influences, and ideas that equally informed his paintings and curatorial activities. On view will be several collages loosely inspired by the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris; a group of abstract drawings and collages that—in Davis’s typical fashion—play with the idea of referentiality; and a rarely seen artist’s book outlining his vision for the Purple Garden at the Underground Museum, the experimental Los Angeles exhibition space that he and Karon founded together. The presentation will be complemented by a small selection of paintings that further elucidate the back-and-forth between media inherent to Davis’s body of work.

The exhibition coincides with the largest retrospective of Davis’s work to date, which is on view through January 5, 2025, at DAS MINSK, Potsdam, Germany. The retrospective will subsequently travel to the Barbican, London, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Davis’s work will also be on view in the group show Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.