The Washington Post, review by Sebastian Smee
February 11, 2020
“The show is so good—yet so poignantly final—that it leaves you feeling both euphoric and wretched. As art, it stands alone, 100 percent persuasive. [...] There was nothing formulaic about Davis’s approach. Even when he was painting mundane domestic scenes, his eye for the subject and his painterly treatment infused them with a sly, soft-pedaled, gently melancholy wonder. One thinks of Fairfield Porter with a little more zing, or of a more nonchalant Peter Doig. In several images, Davis showed people dwarfed by varieties of magical immensity. He would paint a child in blue pajamas at the foot of a daunting wooden staircase leading to a door emitting a mysterious cloud of colored glitter. Or a man looking at a monumental abstract sculpture on the leafy grounds of a wealthy estate. Or simply the night sky over Los Angeles.” Read the full review in The Washington Post
Image: Installation view, Noah Davis, David Zwirner, New York, 2020
