Noah Davis
Tilton Gallery, New York
November 10 – December 22, 2011
Tilton Gallery presents an exhibition of paintings by NOAH DAVIS. This is the artist's second solo show with the gallery.
Rich and painterly, Noah Davis’ work conveys a depth of emotion rare in any contemporary art, let alone coming from an artist still in his twenties. Most paintings portray a lone figure in a landscape or interior space that is at once recognizable and imaginary. Landscapes are suggested, interior perspectives are skewed just enough, and figures themselves are abstracted, features often obscured, so that the subject of each work maintains a sense of mystery that makes it all the more powerful.
Informed by literature, old Hollywood and real life and death, these paintings are not about being pretty or literal or pat one-liners. They are about beauty and heartache and the joy of painting, and they provoke long contemplation. These paintings allow for multiple interpretations and their strength lies in their openness. These images stay with one, as does Noah Davis’ ease with the paint brush, his subtle, very personal color palette and his ability to meld abstract, painterly areas with a clear, direct use of line to define figures and space. These paintings hold their own within the history of figurative painting.
Noah Davis brings the abstraction of nature to the fore in three huge vertical paintings that cover one wall, separate works, but hung like a triptych. Close up depictions of rocks, piled upon and up against one another, they are imbued with light and air till they lose their weight and become a floating mass of rounded shapes, investigating nature. One could read in metaphors: of rocks that create a screen or barrier, of the rock of Sisyphus multiplied many times over, but finally they are gestural odes to painting itself.
NOAH DAVIS was born in Seattle, Washington in 1983. He studied at the Cooper Union School of Art, New York and currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two year old son. His work has been included in the Rubell Family Collection’s exhibition 30 Americans, shown at the Rubell Family Collection Museum in Miami, now at the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, D.C., and slated to travel to other museum venues. Represented by Roberts & Tilton in Los Angeles, his work has been exhibited in Santa Barbara, Seattle and Naples, Italy.
Previous post about Noah Davis work on Wanafoto :
Noah Davis: Nobody, Roberts & Tilton, Culver City (2008)
Noah Davis, Tilton Gallery, New York (2009)
Noah Davis: The Forgotten Works, Roberts & Tilton, Culver City (2010)
TILTON GALLERY
8 East 76 Street, New York, NY 10021
