96. NOAH DAVIS: A SPACE BETWEEN REALITY AND MAGIC.

Noah Davis, The Barbican - LONDON.

Noah Davis, 40 Acres and a Unicorn, 2007 (c) The Estate of Noah Davis Courtesy The Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner.

'I'd rather fail at painting than be successful in anything else.' N.D.

A unicorn stands in blackness - illuminated as if from within, their lunar skin a lantern - lighting a way for its rider. A seated figure whose limbs amorphous - semi-wrapped within a cask of bandage. The figure seems familiar from a rose period Picasso? Or rather the original source for such artists who stole inspiration from sacred African artifacts. The figure - softly holds the reins of nothingness - as the mythical being's horn - sharply directs our attention to the sky above. The magical creature stands stately on what appears to be a section of a convex orb. Noah Davis was known to associate himself with Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife. The god of the moon and lord of silence.

A posthumous presentation of paintings continues the traditions of storytelling - Davis's contribution washes over you as a storm which has been brewing in a distance, a storm which has been forming long before the artist's now famed status - an artist who has run a relay with a responsibility to respond and define.

Symbolism is particularly pronounced within the work of Davis, the influence of ancient Egypt noted for the repeated connection to Osiris, associated with the annual flooding of the Nile River. Water is everywhere within the works seen, within the splash-less turquoise pools - flatly rendered as green screens - allow for our own imagined projections - our own lived reflections and realities. Within the lagoons and lakes that backdrop painted collectives, within the humid hazes rendered to bleed as damp and unset, of tears which never dry, images which return us to the first times seen as the last. Again and again - the artist presents worlds within worlds, at times over-painted as a rhythm within a chorus, as a note hanging in space - to stretch as the overheard trumpet of John Coltrane, which lingers to meld into an atmosphere of prayer.

A body levitates between worlds - never to break the surface with a splash - for as Muybridge proved with horses - so too does Davis - that to jump is really to take flight - and as he intended to prove - there is magic within his reality.

'It's really all you have is this one image, we are not filmmakers, we are not making television, we are not on the radio… we are doing this one image, and how can we convey a whole story, a whole landscape of feelings and everything just with this one still image​.' N.D.

Images glide as the photographs collected from buckets of abandoned identities found in Los Angeles flea markets.

'I was collecting as many photographs as I possibly could... trying to pick the ones that felt most like snap photography... (a slice of life. It's not necessarily high photography, but tells a story... My purpose for when I first started painting was to take these anonymous moments and make them permanent...
The reason I started painting was that I almost felt like those photographs, I felt that nobody knew who I was.' N.D.

These atmospheric depictions show scenes that possibly mirror the artist's own nuclear family dynamic, scenes of life and of the normalities of the everyday, where to be seen in states of undress are not rendered erotic but innocent and responsive to temperature and temperament.

Eyes meet camera lenses without pose or modern-day coy deceit, instead, placid faces look back, their sepia blurs printed softly - their slackened gaze seem collectively unaware of the cameras recording nature. Reminding of the historic fear of how a camera may rob a person of their soul - and yet with Davis’s emotive re-rendering, created images allow for the reverse - for the soul to be seen - even restored.

'I knew that I wanted to make something that was extremely normal, all this stuff about regular life, seemed artistic, and I wanted to bring it to life, I wanted black people to be normal, that was my whole thing, we are normal right?…
But I wanted to be more magical, I didn’t want to be so stuck in reality.' N.D.

Apparently, at the end of a life, the many memories lived are meant to flash before the eyes, walking through the galleries of Noah Davis - a parallel is felt - to be bathed in the lucid light of summers, the sofa siesta with sisters, to walk with shadows in streets - as states change - to become a portal - a hole torn within the scenery of changing acts - exposing the galaxies within.

To fall as to never meet the end - to sleep within a tender palette applied within a conversation of consciousnesses - watchful and rare. A self frequenting a land of illusions, rendered as mirages on the landscape of confession.

It is with idiosyncratic grace and privacy that Davis distills his magic - depictions of a life made for the eyes of the loved by the soul of the missed.

Noah Davis, Pueblo del Rio: Arabesque, 2014. Oil on Canvas, 121.9 × 182.9 cm. (c) The Estate of Noah Davis Courtesy The Estate of Noah Davis and David Zwirner. Image: M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN).

Noah Davis Barbican - until 11 May 2025.

Special thanks: Hannah Carr and Zoe Graham. David Zwirner Gallery. Dr Ekua McMorris, Dr Susannah Haslem, Alkesh Parmar, Nathan Francois, Dr Aleya James.