DAS MINSK, Potsdam, Germany; Barbican, London; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
September 7, 2024–August 31, 2025
Celebrating the late artist’s expansive creativity, this debut retrospective showcases Noah Davis as one of the most original and uncanny painters emerging in recent years. Bringing together over 50 works spanning the artist’s career, this major touring exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of Davis’ extraordinary practice in painting as well as his work in curating and community-building as co-founder of The Underground Museum.
Based primarily in Los Angeles, Davis created a body of figurative paintings that explore a range of Black life. Believing he had a “responsibility to represent the people around me,” Davis drew on anonymous photography found in flea markets, personal archives, film and television, music, literature, art history and his imagination to create a ravishing body of work. Figures dive into swimming pools, sleep, dance, and look at public art in settings that can be both realistic and dreamlike, joyful, and melancholic. Often enigmatic and uncanny, Davis’ paintings reveal a deep feeling for people, humanity and the emotional textures of everyday life.
Organized chronologically, this retrospective presents Davis’ relentless curiosity beginning with his first exhibition in 2007, spanning 8 years until his untimely death in 2015. Featuring previously unseen paintings, works on paper, sculpture and his work at The Underground Museum, the exhibition pays special attention to the art historical, philosophical and conceptual approaches to his practice, revealing that collected images, humor, and above all, people were the core of his work.
Noah Davis is initiated by Barbican, London and DAS MINSK, Potsdam where it will be on display September 7, 2024 – 5 January 2025. The exhibition will tour to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles 8 June – 31 August 2025.
Learn more at the DAS MINSK.