When Noah Davis passed away in 2015, aged just 32, he left a massive hole in the art world—and an incredible body of paintings from his eight-year career, exploring the intersection of race, identity, and capturing Black domestic life.

This week, Das Minsk Kunsthaus in Potsdam has opened its doors to the largest retrospective of Davis’s career to date, bringing together 50 works by the late Los Angeles Underground Museum founder. The exhibition offers an overview of his evocative practice, which blends figurative and abstract painting, surrealism and realism, collage and sculpture.

Some of the works have never been seen before and include pieces on paper and sculpture, highlighting the conceptual themes in his practice and his focus on people.

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Noah Davis, Single Mother with Father Out of the Picture, 2007–2008. Private Collection
© The Estate of Noah Davis. Courtesy The Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner

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‘If I’m making any statement, it’s to just show Black people in normal scenarios,’ Davis said of his own work. Emotionally and atmospherically charged, his paintings capture the quiet joy, melancholy, excitement, and serenity of his cast of figures—painted from a mix of anonymous flea-market photographs, his imagination, personal archives, film and televisions, and art history.

In many of his paintings, the action occurs within the domestic sphere—women sitting in their living rooms, surrounded by the patterned upholstery of armchairs; ‘Isis’ depicts his artist-wife Karon Davis with a pair of yellow fans against the clapboard siding of a house. Others depict figures diving into swimming pools, reading or sleeping.

These intimate and gently ‘ordinary’ snapshots of Black life possess a soft, dreamlike quality, with figures suspended somewhere between reality and fantasy, featuring blurred faces and elongated forms.

Noah Davis runs at Das Minsk Kunsthaus in Potsdam until 5 January 2025, after which the exhibition will travel to London’s Barbican 6 February-11 May 2025) and then on to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (8 June 8-31 August 2025).

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