Noah Davis, who sadly died of cancer in 2015 at aged 32, left behind over 400 paintings, collages, and sculptures. With his wife, the artist Karon Davis, and his brother, artist Kahlil Joseph, Davis cofounded The Underground Museum, a Black-owned-and-operated gallery in Arlington Heights in LA.
The Underground Museum’s ‘backroom’ has been recreated at David Zwirner London as part of an exhibition of Davis’ work organised by Helen Molesworth. Also on show is a sculpture by Karon Davis, furniture designed by Davis’ mother and a screen showing BLKNWS by Kahlil Joseph. This communal feeling echoes something of the generosity that Noah Davis displayed in life; yet his work so often depicted solitary figures. So often, he painted, as Leah Ollman put it in a review when the artist was still alive, ‘with the chromatic and emotional palette of an old soul wanting to reconnect with something lost’.
It’s all too human to want to connect with a great talent, who you can’t help but feel, would have gone on to achieve so much more. But Molesworth would warn us not to get too swept up in such heady emotions. Introducing the New York iteration of the exhibition at the beginning of 2020, the writer and curator said, ‘there wasn’t a tragic bone in the man’s body’.