Flashback- Los Angeles Art Shows- Noah Davis at MOCA and the Underground Museum

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture
Apr 172026
 

Today’s flashback is to Noah Davis‘s Imitation of Wealth installation, which was shown in MOCA’s storefront space in 2015. Sadly, Davis passed away before it opened.

Some of these works are currently on view as part of his gorgeous retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

From MOCA’s website about the installation-

One of the unique characteristics of the contemporary art scene in Los Angeles is the proliferation of artist-run spaces, many of which are located in storefronts across the city. MOCA was founded by artists and, due to its philosophy of placing artists at the center of its mission, has long been known as “the artist’s museum.” Storefront continues this tradition by inviting two artist-run organizations to take over MOCA’s Marcia Simon Weisman Works on Paper Study Center each year.

Founded in 2012, The Underground Museum is a storefront space developed by artist Noah Davis. Located at 3508 West Washington Avenue in Los Angeles’s Arlington Heights neighborhood, The Underground Museum has a gallery space, offices that serve as editing suites and a painting studio, and an outdoor garden which hosts parties, events, and film screenings. Davis wanted to bring what he called “museum-quality art” to a traditionally African American and Latino working-class neighborhood. However, when The Underground Museum first opened, no museums were willing to lend such works. Undaunted, Davis decided to recreate iconic artworks by famous artists such as Marcel Duchamp, On Kawara, and Jeff Koons. The title for his inaugural exhibition, Imitation of Wealth, alludes to Douglas Sirk’s classic film Imitation of Life (1959), a pre-civil rights era melodrama about passing. Just as the film’s protagonist pretends to be white in order to escape the fate of the second-class citizenship offered to African Americans, the works in the exhibition masquerade as famous works of art in an attempt to break down the traditional class and ethnic barriers to high culture. Irreverent and tongue-in-cheek, Imitation of Wealth stages many of art’s time-honored questions about the nature of truth and authenticity.

The Underground Museum, where this work was first shown, was a unique and special place that held many great exhibitions and events. After Davis’s death it was run by his wife artist Karon Davis (who co-founded the space) and brother, filmmaker Kahlil Joseph, artist. The museum closed in 2022.

Below are some images from a visit in 2019.

Front doors of the Underground Museum

Two views of the outdoor space at the museum-

Along with the galleries, bookstore, and outdoor spaces, you could even find artwork in the bathrooms. The unique wallpaper collage seen below was created by Genevieve Gaignard.

Objects in the bathroom at the Underground Museum

Wallpaper detail

Pennsylvania Art Shows- Noah Davis at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Drawing, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Sculptors / Sculpture
Apr 162026
 

Noah Davis, “The Conductor”, 2014, Oil on canvas

A collection of photographs, notes, documents, and a video (not pictured) are located on a wall at the beginning of the exhibition

Now on its final stop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the retrospective Noah Davis presents a collection works from the artist’s short but impressive career.

From the museum about the show-

Noah Davis (born in 1983) drew inspiration from every corner of life: photographs dug out of bins in flea markets, books on Egyptian mythology, daytime television, history paintings, early internet blogs. He used these sources to populate his work with a cast of anonymous figures who rest and play and dance and read and swim in scenes that tug between the fictional and the imaginary, the ordinary and the fantastical.

Even as a high school student, Davis had a painting studio, a space near his family home in Seattle that his parents had rented in the hope that he would kindly stop ruining the carpets. He studied film and conceptual art at Cooper Union in New York City before assembling his own motley education among fellow artists in Los Angeles. He slid fluidly between painting styles to present a breadth of Black life, feeling keenly a responsibility to represent the people around him. In 2012, Davis and his wife Karon cofounded the Underground Museum, in the historically Black and Latinx Los Angeles neighborhood of Arlington Heights. There they transformed three storefronts into a cultural center that was free and open to all.

This exhibition, the first museum retrospective of Davis’s work, highlights his relentless creativity from 2007 until his untimely death in 2015, and his devotion to all aspects of a person’s encounter with art. As he put it simply: “Painting does something to your soul that nothing else can. It is visceral and immediate.”

Below are a few selections-

“Isis”, 2009, Oil and acrylic on linen

Artist Karon Davis, Noah’s wife, discussed Isis on the audio tour provided for Hammer Museum’s version of the exhibition.

Below is an excerpt from the transcript-

…Isis is based on a photo Noah took the day I unfurled two large fans, each with cheesy images of an Egyptian king and queen printed on their surface, and painted them yellow with house paint. I threw on my sister’s Naja’s old gold dance leotard from the 80s with sequins lining the hems and tassels that hung off my butt and sparkled like tinsel.

Noah said, “Stand there. You are Isis.” Using the fans as wings, I raised my arms and opened them. He snapped the pic and quickly retreated to paint. Egypt has always held a special place in my heart. When Noah and I met, I was studying ancient myths and history. I had just left my production job in Hollywood and was exploring film projects. Black Wall Street, Black Cowboys, Stepin Fetchit, The Frogs, Egyptian mythology, and so on.

Noah joined me on these journeys through history, and our home became a portal where imaginations could run wild. We exchanged stories, dreams, and techniques of making art. He painted and we lost ourselves in the magical time.

You can see both of us in this painting. Noah’s reflection is behind me in the window of our home. This painting holds so much for me. It is our past, and it is my present, and future in both painting and in life. I am Isis, and Noah is Osiris.

In ancient Egyptian mythology, Isis assembles all the scattered parts of Osiris in order to cast a spell to make him whole again, so he can live forever as a god. Noah is my Osiris. He will live forever through his work. My assignment is gathering these parts of my love and protecting them..

“Pueblo del Rio: Arabesque”, 2014, Oil on canvas

From the museum about the paintings above-

These works were inspired by Pueblo del Rio, a housing project designed in part by Paul Williams in 1941 for Black defense workers in Los Angeles. The projects were built along the concept of a “garden city,” with shared lawns and outdoor spaces designed to promote community, but they quickly degenerated into one of the most impoverished and dangerous areas in the city. In quiet resistance to this reality, Davis reimagined Pueblo del Rio as a place of harmony and accord, where ballet dancers arabesque and a trumpeter plays.

The exhibition also includes Davis’s Imitation of Wealth, pictured below, where he recreated famous works of art.

“Imitation of Wealth” -Davis’s versions of sculptures by Dan Flavin and Marcel Duchamp and a real On Kawara painting

From the museum-

Davis’s father left him a small inheritance, specifically for fostering community and joy. Davis and Karon rented three storefronts in the Arlington Heights section of Los Angeles, and started devoting themselves to what would become known as the Underground Museum (UM) – an art space, free and open to all — made possible by his father’s legacy. Davis’s paintings of this time reveal a man deeply invested in the question of what he felt had been missing all these years: spaces for “the people around me” to feel recognized and to congregate. The exhibition The Missing Link opened at Roberts & Tilton Gallery in Los Angeles in February 2013.

Davis persuaded his gallery to throw the opening dinner at the UM, which became the museum’s unofficial opening. He served frogs’ legs and champagne, and guests were able to enjoy new sculptures by Karon, as well as their first jointly curated show: Imitation of Wealth. When no museums would lend, Davis decided he would simply make do himself: “What if we just use what we have — like these ugly-ass lights.” The building’s LED strip lights were turned into an imitation Dan Flavin sculpture, while a $70 vacuum cleaner from Craigslist became a knockoff Jeff Koons. The exhibition became a kind of elegy to the bootleg, the title alluding to Douglas Sirk’s 1959 melodrama Imitation of Life, in which the young Black protagonist passes as white.

The museum included one work from their own collection, On Kawara‘s 3. JUNI 2001 (2001), in this recreation, with an interesting coincidence-

When he started bootlegging his own artworks, he made a fake On Kawara painting with the date of Oct. 7, 1957, to mark his father, Keven Davis’s, birthday. To honor his original spirit and ambition, we are lending this authentic On Kawara from our collection to join his “imitations” — it’s a special coincidence that the date is Noah Davis’s own birthday. The year 2001 was when he moved to New York to become an artist; a moment that led to everything else in this exhibition.

This exhibition closes 4/26/26.

Celeste Dupuy-Spencer (1979-2026)

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Apr 142026
 

“Early Snow – Rhinecliff Hotel”, 2017, oil on canvas

“Durham, August 14, 2017”, 2017, oil on canvas

American painter Celeste Dupuy-Spencer passed away last week at the age of 46. The images above are from her 2017 exhibition Wild and Blue at Marlborough gallery in NYC. She had also been part of the Whitney Biennial earlier that same year.

The first painting is of the Rhinecliff Hotel, a bar she frequented while growing up in Rhinebeck, NY. The second, Durham, August 14, 2017, is of the metal confederate statue that protesters tore down that year. That painting was also included in her section of Made in L.A. 2018, Hammer Museum‘s biennial exhibition of artists from the Los Angeles area. Her later work was often very political, including several paintings that are dense with imagery.

In this 2018 Bomb magazine interview, Dupuy-Spencer discusses some of her past struggles and provides insights into her practice.

Her first solo exhibition in five years, Burning in the Eyes of the Maker, will open at Deitch in Los Angeles this Saturday, 4/18/26.

Song of the Day- Down Time- “Third Eye”

 Los Angeles Music, Music, Musicians / Bands, Spotify Playlist
Apr 132026
 

Down Time- Third Eye

LA band Down Time released this single in 2025 and it is also on their most recent EP, Latest Dreams.

They are playing at Non Plus Ultra in Los Angeles on Friday, 4/17/26, with Had Had and Tenderoni.

Delaware Art Shows- “Constellations of Belonging” at The Delaware Contemporary

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Delaware, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture, Wilmington
Apr 102026
 

Debra Cartwright, “Marked Infertile, 1873”, 2025, watercolor and oil on canvas

Tiana McMillan, “Venus Skirt”, 2018, ceramic

Tiana McMillan, “Self portrait”, 2017, underglazed ceramic (with work by Debra Cartwright in the background)

Debra Cartwright, “Whispers of care”, 2025, watercolor, pencil, ink, and collage on paper

Debra Cartwright‘s paintings and Tiana McMillan‘s sculptures work well together in Constellations of Belonging, currently on view at The Delaware Contemporary.

From the museum’s website-

Constellations of Belonging unfolds within a moment shaped by surveillance, bodily regulation, and persistent demands that Black women be legible, visible and consumable. The body is monitored, narrated, disciplined, and asked to explain its own presence.

This exhibition considers how artists tend to their inner world under these conditions. Interiority is approached as a political and ethical practice—a site of care, imagination, and endurance beyond public demand. The exhibition takes its structure from constellations: provisional patterns drawn across distance. Belonging, here, is composed across difference, pressure,and time.

Within the gallery, this idea appears through light and weight. Darker works, anchored at a concentrated point within the gallery, function as repositories—holding what has become too heavy, too charged, or too historically burdened to remain invisible. In doing so, they allow other forms within the space to move with greater restraint and quiet, unencumbered by what has already been borne.

This distribution frames fragmentation as strategy. The body, like a constellation, is extended across multiple sites as a means of protection and care. What is held in one place reshapes what becomes possible in another.

Constellations of Belonging invites viewers to consider belonging as a continual practice –made and remade in relation, sustained through imagination, and carried collectively rather than alone.

This exhibition closes 4/26/26.

Delaware Art Shows- “Creative Influence(r)” at The Delaware Contemporary

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film, Wilmington
Apr 102026
 

Lindsey Cherek Waller, “Making Plans”, 2025, acrylic on stretched canvas (It was also used for the cover of the upcoming book “Girls Our Age” by Phoebe Thompson)

Perry Picasshoe, “Splitting Heaven”, 2025, oil on unstretched canvas (part of a performance piece)

Perry Picasshoe, “Splitting Heaven”, 2025 (detail)

Creative Influence(r), currently on view at The Delaware Contemporary, features work by Lindsey Cherek Waller and Perry Picasshoe, two artists who use social media platforms to increase their visibility and success.

From the museum about the exhibition-

For centuries, art museums have wielded their power to define a predictable, prescribed path for aspiring artists. An artist striving to build a career from their work traditionally starts with a formal arts education, then builds a portfolio, hoping to secure gallery representation, which will garner the attention of collectors, galleries, and museums. But since the 2010s, that has shifted. Increasingly, young and emerging artists are utilizing social media platforms to subvert the traditional routes to becoming a working artist; a path that, for many, has numerous real and perceived barriers to entry. Using social media platforms, like TikTok and Instagram, artists have found ways to circumvent the traditional hierarchy of the art world, building their own audiences and collector bases by sharing their work online for millions to discover and appreciate. By utilizing these platforms, artists have also found a way to reinvigorate art for younger generations and those who feel excluded from institutional structures, making contemporary art more accessible for all.

Lindsey Cherek Waller and Perry Picasshoe built their artistic career on social media platforms where their art is activism. Their public artwork has protested ICE abductions, it has protected queer virtual and physical queer spaces, and has raised funds to support causes important to them. These artists are only two of many who are redefining “success in the art world”, their success comes directly from their fearlessness and advocacy for their work and communities.

Creative Influence(r) is on view until 4/26/26.

Delaware Art Shows- “This Place Meant” at The Delaware Contemporary

 Architecture, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Conceptual Art, Delaware, Drawing, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture, Wilmington
Apr 092026
 

Thea Abu El-Haj, “Architecture of Exile”, 2023, oil on board

Rayan Elnayal, “The courtyard lit up-Al Hoash Nawar”, 2023, digital print

Shira Walinsky’s installation

For This Place Meant at The Delaware Contemporary, artists Thea Abu El-Haj, Rayan Elnayal, and Shira Walinsky each present work that reflects aspects of what home means to them.

From the museum about the exhibition-

This Place Meant explores how three artists think about and imagine home when they are far from it. Each artist explores their lived or past relationship with the place they call home and where they are now. Thea Abu El-Haj remembers the home she once knew, Rayan Elnayal imagines a home she hopes to know, and Shira Walinsky shares the home she knows with new neighbors. If you were forced to leave your home, whether to be closer to family, to find a better life, to escape natural disasters or political trouble, how would you share memories from where you once lived? What parts of that place would you describe: the colors, the smells, the sounds?

We hope you tell them what that place meant to you.

Below are some additional works and the artist bios from The Delaware Contemporary’s website.

Paintings by Thea Abu El-Haj

As a Palestinian American artist, Thea’s work excavates personal and collective narratives of loss, exile, and resistance, even as it celebrates the beauty and joy around us. She is drawn to the imprint of human history on the natural landscape. Growing up in the Middle East, the colors, quality of light, and traces of millennia of human presence continue to resonate through her work, even as the landscapes of the Northeastern U.S. where she has lived her adult life influence what she paints. Buildings and stone walls in the process of decay; light coming through dark and dark through light; the quality of color at different times of day are all sources for her work.

Digital prints by Rayan Elnayal

Rayan Elnayal is a Sudanese artist, designer, and educator based in London, with a background in architecture. In 2020, she transitioned from traditional practice to an alternative one that fosters a more equitable and creative approach to design but also nurtures her artistic pursuits. She is also the co-founder and director of Space Black, a collective of Black professionals in the built environment, dedicated to imagining alternative spatial futures for marginalised communities.

Her pieces invite viewers to step into these imagined spaces and explore them. Her work challenges us to reflect on our personal attitudes toward futurism and futuristic aesthetics, while reminding us that our envisioned future built environments can honour our heritages, communities, and shared joy.

Shira Walinsky is an interdisciplinary artist and teacher. Her work centers on people and places in the City of Philadelphia. She has worked in Philadelphia for 20 years on murals, paintings, photography, films and other public participatory work. The map can be a portrait of places and the face a map of our experiences. She is interested in how the vibrant and the sensory can amplify the stories of people and place. This manifests in bus wraps, films, photography, painting and murals. In 2012 she co-founded Southeast by Southeast with Mural Arts Philadelphia. Southeast by Southeast is a community space co-created with social workers and artists and community leaders for and with refugee and immigrant communities. Shira strives to create innovative projects which elevate the resilience of immigrant and refugee stories.

This exhibition, part of the museum’s Winter/Spring exhibitions, closes on 4/26/26.

Pennsylvania Murals- Amy Sherald in Philadelphia

 Art, Artists, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Public Art, Street Art
Apr 082026
 

This portrait of Philadelphian Najee Spencer-Young was created by artist Amy Sherald in 2019 for Mural Arts Philadelphia.

From the Mural Arts website about the work-

Artist Amy Sherald made headlines around the world with her stunning official portrait of Michelle Obama, portraying not only the beauty and intelligence of the woman herself but the depth and breadth of all that she represents as our first African-American First Lady. Sherald’s overall body of work represents reflective, everyday moments within the lives of Black people, evocative portraits that explore how people construct and present their own identities.

Now Sherald brings her work to a new scale: working with Mural Arts Philadelphia on a massive mural portrait in Center City. The portrait is of Najee S., a young Philadelphian and participant in our art education program. Like the First Lady’s portrait, Sherald’s mural challenges ideas about identity and the public gaze, asking the questions: “Who is allowed to be comfortable in public spaces? Who is represented in art? How can one woman’s portrait begin to shift that experience for others?”

The project began with a field trip to Sherald’s studio by some of Mural Arts’ art education participants. The young people spent a day with Sherald, learning about her unique artistic practice, exploring costumes, and taking photographs together that would form the inspiration for the mural.

Three of Mural Arts’ Art Education assistant artists, Kien Nguyen, Arthur Haywood, and Emily White, also had the opportunity to study with Sherald in order to learn about her artistic process. They shared her unique process in classroom exercises with Philadelphia students, and also began work from Amy’s design to execute the six-story-high mural.

Mural Arts Philadelphia Executive Director Jane Golden says, “We are so honored to be working with Amy Sherald. For years we have admired her painting; there is such strength in her composition, her color and the way she captures a gaze. And now she has teamed up with our art education program to create a unique mural in the heart of our city. What an extraordinary moment for Mural Arts and for Philadelphia.”

 

Song of the Day- Jawdropped- “Skully”

 Los Angeles Music, Music, Musicians / Bands, Spotify Playlist
Apr 062026
 

Jawdropped- Skully

This song is from LA band Jawdropped‘s 2025 album, Just Fantasy.

On Saturday (4/11/26), they will be playing at Pacific Electric in Los Angeles as part of California Chaos, an all California festival. The lineup also includes Militarie Gun, Stateside, Grave Secrets, XCOMM, Blossom, and Star 99.

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