#karon davis

[candybisous]

“Beauty Must Suffer” by Karon Davis at Salon 94

camrihewie

[desrac]

Karov Davis

[baybebird]

photo by me, from December

[mentaltimetraveller]

Karon Davis: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" @ Jeffrey Deitch, NYC  2021

[brooklynmuseum]

In Karon Davis’s nearly life-sized sculpture “Nicotine,” a tired yet resolute nurse sits alone, savoring a cigarette break. The nurse’s colorful scrubs take shape around an armature of plaster, and frayed edges reveal shredded medical bills amassed from cancer treatments for the artist’s late husband, painter Noah Davis. Begun in collaboration, “Nicotine” was completed by Karon following Noah’s death, and their harrowing, expensive hospital stay. A 2016 rumination on incalculable personal loss, the work also emphasizes how care and humanity persist, despite the impersonal bureaucracy of the U.S. healthcare system, also highlighting the role of Black women in the field in particular. Viewed in 2020 amidst a devastating pandemic, “Nicotine” reminds us of the emotional and physical toll that healthcare workers endure for the sake of the health of their patients and communities.   

In the final weeks of 2020, we're taking time to find comfort, hope, and healing with artworks in the Museum's collection. 

Posted by Carmen Hermo Karon Davis. Nicotine, 2016. Plaster, cloth, oil paint, synthetic hair, clothing, wire, shredded bills, coffee cup, wood, mirror, cigarette. Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of Beth Rudin DeWoody, 2018.2. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Photo courtesy Wilding Cran Gallery)

[hydeordie]

Karon Davis

Underground Museum

Cofounded in 2012 by the painter Noah Davis, a rising L.A. art star, and his wife, Karon, a sculptor, the Underground Museum began as a row of storefront spaces that doubled as the couple’s studio and home. Though the Studio Museum in Harlem, in New York, and the Rubell Family Collection, in Miami, had acquired some of Davis’s moody ­figurative paintings, Davis wanted to sidestep the gallery system, preferring to bring museum-quality art to a community that had no access to it “within walking distance,” as he once put it.

[longlistshort]

("Graduation", (1949) © Estate of Roy DeCarava )

We look at so many images today that often the value of individual photos decreases with the abundance of them. That’s why it is such a pleasure to spend time with Roy DeCarava’s black and white photographs at The Underground Museum. His images have a meditative beauty to them. They catch your eye and hold it. There is a richness to his compositions, his use of textures and light.

While at The Underground Museum, also take a moment to look through a copy of De Carava’s book collaboration with writer Langston Hughes, The Sweet Flypaper of Life in the book store.  The images in it influenced artist Kahlil Joseph’s film Flypaper (2017), which was recently shown at MOCA. Kahlil Joseph’s brother, artist Noah Davis, who sadly passed away in 2015, founded The Underground Museum with his wife, artist Karon Davis, in 2012.

Roy DeCarava: The Work of Art closes 6/29/19.

(“Bill and son”(1962) © Estate of Roy DeCarava )

[desrac]

Karon Davis