Noah Davis

Born in Seattle, Washington, Noah Davis began his studies at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York in 2001, but left for Los Angeles in 2004, exhibiting his work in various group exhibitions starting in 2007. Depicting the Black figure across dreamline compositions, Davis handles the human form with detail and impressionistic movement. Situated in flattened environments, often inspired by Los Angeles, Davis draws upon family photographs and popular culture, resulting in compositions that wander away from their origins in reality. Bordering on the uncanny and surreal, Davis masterfully creates alternate universes, tweaked in ways to reveal simmering truths. His technique of priming canvases with rabbit-skin glue adds a sparkling sheen, contributing to the mirage-like quality of his paintings.

Davis’ involvements in the arts went past his own artistic practice; Davis founded The Underground Museum in 2012 in Los Angeles alongside his wife and fellow artist Karon Davis, curating shows up until his death. Passing away at the young age of 32 due to a rare form of cancer, Davis’s legacy endures, cementing his place among the great visionaries of the twenty-first century. Davis was the recipient of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s 2013 Art Here and Now: Studio Forum award, and his works currently reside in premier institutional collections, including the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Studio Museum in New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.