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Noah Davis Retrospective at the Hammer Museum

DAS MINSK, Potsdam, Germany

Noah Davis Retrospective at Das Minsk

The Barbican Centre will present the second leg of 

the largest international institutional survey to date of the late artist Noah Davis (1983-2015). The Barbican Centre’s presentation will bring together approximately 50 works spanning the artist’s complete oeuvre, offering a comprehensive overview of Davis’ extraordinary practice.

is the artist’s inaugural international institutional retrospective and will subsequently travel to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles in Summer 2025.

Curated chronologically, the retrospective presents Davis’ relentless creativity and curiosity commencing with his first exhibition in 2007, spanning eight years until his untimely death in 2015. Featuring previously unseen paintings, works on paper and sculpture, the exhibition pays special attention to the art historical and conceptual approaches in his practice, revealing that art history, imagery, humor, and above all, people were the epicenter of his work.

Installation view of the exhibition Noah Davis at the Barbican Centre in London, dated 2025.

Barbican Centre, London, United Kingdom

Noah Davis Retrospective at the Barbican

Celebrating the late artist’s expansive creativity, this debut retrospective showcases Noah Davis as one of the most original and uncanny painters emerging in recent years. Bringing together over 50 works spanning the artist’s career, this major touring exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of Davis’ extraordinary practice in painting as well as his work in curating and community-building as co-founder of The Underground Museum.

Based primarily in Los Angeles, Davis created a body of figurative paintings that explore a range of Black life. Believing he had a “responsibility to represent the people around me,” Davis drew on anonymous photography found in flea markets, personal archives, film and television, music, literature, art history and his imagination to create a ravishing body of work. Figures dive into swimming pools, sleep, dance, and look at public art in settings that can be both realistic and dreamlike, joyful, and melancholic. Often enigmatic and uncanny, Davis’ paintings reveal a deep feeling for people, humanity and the emotional textures of everyday life.

Organized chronologically, this retrospective presents Davis’ relentless curiosity beginning with his first exhibition in 2007, spanning 8 years until his untimely death in 2015. Featuring previously unseen paintings, works on paper, sculpture and his work at The Underground Museum, the exhibition pays special attention to the art historical, philosophical and conceptual approaches to his practice, revealing that collected images, humor, and above all, people were the core of his work.

 was initiated by Barbican, London and DAS MINSK, Potsdam where it was on display September 7, 2024-January 5, 2025. The exhibition toured to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles June 8–August 31, 2025.

Installation view of the exhibition, Noah Davis, at Das Minsk in Potsdam, Germany, dated 2024.

The first institutional survey of the late 

 (1983–2015) charts the breadth and depth of the American artist’s relentless output. Assembling over 50 works made between 2007 and 2015, the exhibition is organized in a manner that reflects the diverse interests informing Davis’s practice including current affairs, everyday life, family histories, ancient Egyptian cosmologies, the racism of American media, art history, and architecture. 

Inspired by vernacular sources—from flea market photographs to personal archives—Davis’s fluid painting style questioned complex histories of representation and image-making. Although the body of paintings he produced over a brief creative life was largely figurative, Davis employed unorthodox techniques and rich color palettes to create scenes that feel simultaneously realistic and dreamlike, joyful and melancholic, capturing the contradictory sensations of lived experience.



 was previously on view at the Barbican Centre in London, United Kingdom and Das Minsk in Potsdman, Germany.

A painting by Noah Davis, titled Painting for My Dad, dated 2011.

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.