The Haunt of One Yet Faintly Present: Noah Davis, Still at Home

Noah Davis, at the Underground Museum, Los Angeles
Reviewed by Ricky Amadour

Directly across from the entrance, an opening statement to Noah Davis, at the Underground Museum, reads “many of the paintings you are about to see were painted in this space.” Smudges, dribbles, and droplets on the floor embody the physical notion of Davis activating the now museological edifice. Until this very writing, The Underground Museum was the gathering space for black culture in greater Los Angeles. As a Delphic entity, Davis predates the popularity of figurative works that are today commonplace in the art world. One cannot escape the imagining of Davis negotiating his thought process, laboring to organize an institution, and sketching together a community that would build its own familiarity and create an indelible mark. Curated by Helen Molesworth and Justin Leroy, this exhibition morphs Noah Davis the man, the architecture, and his paintings, jointly as one indivisible existence.

Davis’s works function as history paintings with sequential narratives that play off one another. In Casting Call (2008), several women are scattered about a room with hands raised as if rehearsing for a dance routine. Dressed in swimwear or perhaps intimates, each figure portrays a unique individualism through body language and facial expression. I immediately connected Davis with the output of Impressionist artist Edgar Degas. Degas’ poetic delineations portray the grace of young…