DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam, Germany, is currently presenting the largest survey of American artist Noah Davis (1983–2015) thus far. Noah Davis is on view from September 7, 2024 – January 5, 2025, and displays around 60 works from across Davis’ oeuvre. The show is a travelling exhibition that will move to the Barbican Centre, London, followed by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the city where the artist was primarily based. The show was organised by the Barbican, with the inaugural presentation at DAS MINSK Kunsthaus curated by the director Paola Malavassi. STIR takes a closer look at the show.

Davis was a Black artist who, in his tragically short career, held a commitment to portraying Black Americans in regular settings, emphasising, as Malavassi tells STIR, “the joy and melancholy inherent in everyday life”. He drew from reference points, including photography he came across in flea markets, his family archives, literature, art history and more. His depictions of Black life ran counter to the American media’s portrayal of Black people, which tends to present members of the community—especially young Black men—as dangerous and prone to substance abuse and gun violence. As the artist told Dazed Digital in 2010, “If I’m making any statement, it’s to just show Black people in normal scenarios, where drugs and guns are nothing to do with it.”

Returning to Noah Davis, the exhibition features the artist’s painting works and sculpture art, highlighting his affinity for German art movements, including Neue Sachlichkeit (or New Objectivity, 1920 – 1933). The movement arose in response to a growing dissatisfaction with Expressionism. While Expressionist artists such as Edvard Munch often distorted the world around them to highlight their emotional responses, Neue Sachlichkeit artists such as Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (1891 – 1969) rejected all romanticism and instead bluntly engaged with the social realities of their time. Davis’ work also resonates strongly with German history, given the nation’s difficult past involving horrors towards various racial and communal groups in the early decades of the 20th century, carried out with the majoritarian consent of the German people. This, in turn, necessitated a sustained defamation campaign that their state media carried out against these groups. If there is any novelty to be found in Davis’ depiction of Black life, then we must wonder if we, too, have not fallen prey to racial propaganda.

It is easy to see similarities between the American painter and the members of the Neue Sachlichkeit art movement; however, there is a key difference here as well: while Davis was committed to portraying the everyday reality of Black Americans, his work is not bereft of romanticism. There is a deeply emotional quality to his art, though its exact nature is difficult to pin down. Looking at his subjects, who often stare at the viewer listlessly, one might be tempted to call it ennui, yet this is too simplistic. Davis’ subjects feel like the characters in a dream that he can only partially recall. Their images are not fully formed, and are fading into the recesses of his mind. This dream seems to persist across his entire oeuvre and places these characters in the roles he wishes to see reflected in the popular portrayal of Black people. To support this reading, the artist adds fantastical elements to some of his pieces, such as 40 Acres and a Unicorn (2007), which features a human riding a mythical creature.

Davis’ commitment to the Black community went beyond his artmaking. In 2012, with his wife, Karon Davis, he co-founded the Underground Museum in Arlington Heights, Los Angeles. Arlington Heights is a predominantly Black and Latinx neighbourhood, and the museum aims to bring international practices to the community. Additionally, the Underground Museum has spotlit several leading black artists, musicians and filmmakers, such as Deana Lawson, John Legend and Arthur Jafa.

The retrospective exhibition offers German audiences an opportunity to acquaint themselves with a compelling Black American practitioner whose life was tragically cut down well before his time by cancer. While Davis passed away at the age of 32, the artist has left behind nearly four hundred works of art that prompt us to reconsider the dangers of racism and communal stereotyping. The show will be at the Barbican in London from February 6 – May 11, 2025, and at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, from June 8 – August 31, 2025.

‘Noah Davis’ is on view at DAS MINSK Kunsthaus, Potsdam, Germany, from September 7, 2024 – January 5, 2025.