Lo and Behold
Mindy Solomon is pleased to present Lo and Behold the inaugural solo exhibition of St. Louis based multidisciplinary artist Damon Davis. Drawing inspiration from deeply personal themes, Davis explores the notion of art as introspection and catharsis.
“This body of work presents three primary themes: family, place, and transition. Over the past decade, my life has been marked by significant losses – the deaths of loved ones, the destruction of my childhood home, breakups, and estrangement from friends and family. Through this experience, I’ve learned that change is inevitable, and grief and death are inherent parts of life’s journey. This exhibition is a partial attempt to understand, confront, and ultimately accept that everything has a beginning and an end, often without clear answers.
Art-making has been a therapeutic practice for me, and this work is the culmination of living and processing my experiences. Additionally, much of my art explores the collective identities and experiences that shape my life – those related to race, gender, class, and more. This show is a deeply personal exploration of my individual identity as a man approaching middle age, grappling with mortality and grief. The diverse range of mediums used in this exhibition – etchings, paintings, assemblage sculpture, and video art – come together to create a rich tapestry that expresses the full spectrum of emotions I’ve encountered over the past few years. My work remains focused on themes of identity, power, and myth, which are woven throughout this show. Myth-building is a dominant element in this body of work, as I’ve created small myths and characters to serve as metaphors for myself and my experiences.”
Davis has utilized many forms of expression to tell his story, such as his ground breaking “All Hands on Deck” activation in Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting of Michael Brown. Davis worked with store owners, and wheatpasted the plywood-covered windows of participating stores with a series of posters developed from his photographs of hands in the “hands up” gesture. The same gesture Michael Brown was making when shot. In 2016, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego showed the photographs from the project in an exhibit called “Damon Davis: All Hands on Deck.” An original window board from the Ferguson installation is part of the permanent collection at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Davis has been a Hip Hop artist, record label founder, composer, public speaker, and film director. With all his accomplishments, he remains a quiet, humble, thoughtful creative, using his many talents to bring awareness to social injustice and the power of vulnerability. We are thrilled to be able to showcase this multifaceted individual.
About Damon Davis
Damon Davis is a post-disciplinary, Emmy Award winning artist who works and resides in St. Louis, Missouri. In a practice that is part therapy, part social commentary, his work spans a spectrum of creative mediums to tell stories exploring how identity is informed by power and mythology. He is well known for his solo exhibition, Darker Gods in The Garden of Low
Hanging Heavens, which premiered in St. Louis in 2018 and went to Art Basel Miami later that year. The exhibit explored the surrealist manifestations of Black culture by constructing new mythologies in response to tropes of Blackness.
Davis is the founder and creative director of music collective/label FarFetched. Filmmaker Magazine selected him and Sabaah Folayan as part of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film 2016” for their work co-directing the critically acclaimed documentary Whose Streets? chronicling the Ferguson uprising of 2014. In 2020, critic Ben Davis cited his project All Hands On Deck, which captured the hands of people who shaped and upheld the Ferguson movement, as one of the “100 Works of Art That Defined the Decade.” He is a Firelight Media, Sundance Labs, TED, and Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow.
