The UK’s first institutional survey of the late American artist Noah Davis (1983 – 2015) is now open at the Barbican.
Bringing together over 50 works spanning painting, sculpture and works on paper, this major exhibition charts the breadth of Davis’s relentless creativity from 2007 to his untimely death in 2015, giving a comprehensive overview of his practice in painting, curating and community-building as co-founder of the Underground Museum, Los Angeles.
Noah Davis created a body of figurative paintings that explores the emotional, and fantastical, textures of everyday life. Based primarily in Los Angeles, he believed he had a “responsibility to represent the people around me” and drew on an expansive pool of references – anonymous vintage photography found in flea markets, personal archives, film and television, music, literature, art history and his imagination – to paint a cast of characters, some real, some fictional, that dive into swimming pools, sleep, dance and look at public art.
Noah Davis understood the power of art to uplift others and believed art was for everyone. In 2012, he and Karon Davis, his wife and fellow artist, co-founded the Underground Museum, a revered and much-loved institution in the historically Black and Latinx neighbourhood of Arlington Heights, Los Angeles that was free and open to all. In his lifetime, Davis used the Underground Museum as a studio, a site for residencies and an exhibition space, convincing the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) to lend their collection in a three-year partnership starting in 2014.
Organised chronologically and including loans from both public and private international collections, the exhibition features groups of paintings made between 2007 and 2015 that chart the artist’s interest in politics and current affairs, everyday life, ancient Egypt, family history, the racism of the American media, art history and architecture.
Highlights include:
Isis, 2009 – exhibited at his first solo show in 2009, this painting is inspired by ancient Egypt and portrays Davis’s wife Karon as the titular Egyptian goddess of magic, standing in front of a white clapboard house.
1975, 2013 – painted directly from photographs taken by Davis’s mother in 1975, this series of mostly anonymous bodies in landscapes and urban settings demonstrates the artist’s commitment to showing people in what he described as “normal scenarios”.
Pueblo del Rio, 2014 – a series of paintings that reimagines one of the oldest, largest and most impoverished public housing developments in Los Angeles as a site for music, song and dance.
Untitled, 2015 – one of Davis’s final paintings showing two girls lying on a sofa within a living room, a Rothko painting behind them.
The paintings are positioned alongside Davis’s experimentations in sculpture, installation, works on paper and curation, giving special attention to the conceptual underpinnings of his practice, as well as his engagement with the complex histories of representation and image-making.
The exhibition also includes a selection of Davis’s eclectic source material, on display for the first time.
Shanay Jhaveri, Head of Visual Arts at the Barbican, said: “We are delighted to be bringing the work of Noah Davis to audiences here in the UK. A most original and uncanny painter to have emerged in recent years, Davis’s distinctive vision captures the nuances of life with poignancy and depth, bridging personal and collective narratives in ways that profoundly connect with our times. This exhibition is an opportunity not only to celebrate his extraordinary legacy but to inspire dialogues around representation, identity, and community.”
Noah Davis is now open at Barbican, London and will tour to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles 8 June – 31 August 2025 and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2026. For further information: barbican.org.uk
Image: Noah Davis Installation view Barbican Art Gallery 2025 © Jemima Yong/Barbican Art Gallery
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