Rob Davis: Independent Art Fair
May 11th - May 14th, 2023-
Rob Davis Installation View, Nina Johnson, Independent NY. Photography by Daniel Terna
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Rob Davis, Porch, 2023 Oil on linen, 36 x 36 in.
Nina Johnson is pleased to present a solo booth of all new work by Rob Davis.
Davis’ subjects—a dated, empty kitchen, a banana seat bike in a backyard, rotary telephone, a vinyl record collection—feel familiar; yet despite being crafted in meticulous detail, oddly unreal. Davis groups his paintings together without hierarchy, mixing paintings of interiors, bikes, records, and people in order to echo the fragmented and jumbled nature of memory. Through a seemingly happenstance selection of scenes, Davis untangles both the construction of his own identity and the formation of an American identity—one that was both ubiquitous and seemingly naturalized while often at odds with the world around it.
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Rob Davis, Bobbie Gentry, 2023, Oil on linen, 30 x 24 in.
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Rob Davis Installation View, Nina Johnson, Independent NY. Photography by Daniel Terna
By rendering his blue-collar upbringing with hyper-realistic detail and drenching it with a vivid palette, Davis makes his subject matter immediately felt. He transforms his childhood memories into surfaces that both evoke and provoke, inspiring uncanny leaps in the minds of the viewers. We might never have been in these rooms or glanced upon these surfaces, but if we’ve spent any time at all in this country, we know them like the back of our hand. Or like our grandmother’s kitchen table.
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Rob Davis, Blue phone, 2023, Oil on linen, 32 x 24 in.
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Rob Davis Installation View, Nina Johnson, Independent NY. Photography by Daniel Terna
Rob Davis (b. 1970, Norfolk, Virginia) earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997. His work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally, including at the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg (Germany), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Sommer Contemporary (Tel Aviv), and Rental Gallery (New York). He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.