Noah Davis. Painting for My Dad, 2011; oil on canvas; 76 x 91 in. Rubell Family Collection, Miami. © The Estate of Noah Davis. Photo: Rubell Family Collection.

The title of the show comes from a term of endearment Joseph gave Davis and describes their common starting point as artists. Raised in Seattle, the brothers spent the majority of their careers in Los Angeles. Sadly, Davis died of a rare cancer in 2015 at the age of 32. Joseph, who still works in LA, continues to gain elevation, with his most recent work as co-director on Beyoncé’s hip-hop magnum opus Lemonade.

Opening the show is Davis’ Painting for My Dad (2011), featuring a figure, his father, approaching a starry black sky. Holding a lantern, the silhouette is relaxed as it stands beneath a rocky entrance. The night sky before him sparkles, expansive and looming. This dichotomy, of aesthetic simplicity paired with layered states of narrative, not unlike a film still, is a veil of omniscience that speaks through Davis’ work. It is what beckons the viewer to continue looking, to see beyond the canvas. The strokes of paint are just the entry point to a story that extends much further.

Noah Davis. Isis, 2009; oil and acrylic on linen; 48 x 48 in. Collection of Andrew Stearn. © The Estate of Noah Davis. Photo: Mark Woods.

Davis, who had his own studio by the age of 17, seemed to always exist beyond his years. His figurative paintings of oil and acrylic present low-contrast scenes of Black individuals, often of family and friends in domestic environments. The large-scale paintings are complemented by light sweeps of pastel coloring that harmonize his sparse but finely attuned attention to detail. When asked about his eloquent exploration of “instances where Black aesthetics and modernist aesthetics collide,” Davis noted, “race plays a role in as far as my figures are Black… If I’m making any statement, it’s to just show Black people in normal scenarios, where drugs and guns are nothing to do with it.”

A selection of Davis’ imitations of famous works by Jeff Koons and Marcel Duchamp—first exhibited at the Underground Museum—are included in Young Blood. Sensitive to the realities and parallels that exist within intersectionality and the arts, Davis founded the Underground Museum with his wife and fellow artist Karon Davis in the working-class neighborhood of Arlington Heights in 2012. Despite the geographical proximity to LA’s thriving arts scene, the continual lack of social representation remains a barrier for many people, specifically for the majority Black and Latino population living in the area. The Davises built the nonprofit to create and nurture a space of inclusivity. Eventually securing a partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art, they succeeded in introducing an immense breadth of national and international art, and cultivated a thriving community.

Kahlil Joseph. Wildcat (Aunt Janet), 2016 (still); three-channel film work with audio. Courtesy of the Underground Museum.

Meanwhile, Joseph’s work, which sits elusively beyond the genres of cinema and music video, features gritty, stunning visuals paired and made in connection with music by lyrical heavy-hitters such as Shabazz Palaces, Flying Lotus, Kendrick Lamar, and now, Beyoncé. For Young Blood, Joseph created multi-channel installations of previously unseen films and outtakes.

Joseph’s attention to framing adds unique dimension to his filmic content. One of the most notable pieces in the show is the black-and-white film Wildcat (Aunt Janet) (2016). Composed of transparent triangulated screens, three synchronized films form a multidimensional narrative, the video capturing stunning landscapes at dusk, and Black cowboys at a rodeo in Grayson, Oklahoma. Beneath the installation is a triangle of dirt on the floor directly below the screens. Brought in from the Oklahoma rodeo, the mound of earth grounds the film in its origins, even while on display in the Northwest.

Noah Davis and Kahlil Joseph. The Sacred Garden, 2016; installation view. Design and production: Commonwealth Projects. Photo: Mark Woods.

The Sacred Garden (2016) structurally segues the two artists’ bodies of work. The 33-foot-long artificial garden is filled with lush foliage—flowers and bushes in varying shades of purple. As a centerpiece within a purple-walled room, the garden serves both as a tribute to Davis and as an echo to the actual garden behind the Underground Museum. Conceptualized by Davis and constructed by Joseph, it is a contemplative space for both memorial and hope. The room is flanked at the entrance by one of Davis’ earliest exhibited paintings, 2004 (1) (2008), and at the other end, by one of his last, Untitled (2015). Through this amaranthine swansong, this final collaboration is metaphor to heritage, evolution, and spirit, which coalesce within the sanctuary, uniting their unique artistic visions.

Davis and Joseph have contributed immensely to modern art, both as artists and as Black artists. Their work is invaluable not just because of their gifted creative voices, but also due to the added complexity and dynamism their work brings to the whitewashed culture of the art world. As contemporary art and culture continue to evolve, Davis and Joseph illuminate lesser-known vantage points through works where, like Davis’ brushstrokes, the aesthetics are just the beginning of a story that extends much deeper than art.

Young Blood: Noah Davis, Kahlil Joseph, the Underground Museum is on view at Frye Art Museum in Seattle through June 19, 2016.

John Outterbridge. Case in Point, c. 1970 (from the Rag Man Series); mixed media; 12 x 12 x 24 in. Collection of the Hammer Museum. Photo: Andrew Zermeño.

Currently on view at Art + Practice, Rag Man features the work of veteran artist John Outterbridge (b. 1933, Greenville, NC). Outterbridge is no stranger to this kind of community activism through art, having been the director of the Watts Towers Art Center from 1975 to 1992. He is also no stranger to the oft-ignored art scene located “south of the 10” (or south of Interstate 10, as non-Angelenos would say). In fact, the Brockman Gallery, which housed the Black Artists Association and represented artists such as Betye Saar, Noah Purifoy, Kerry James Marshall, David Hammons, and Outterbridge himself, once sat in the same square in Leimert Park. Started by Alonzo and Dale Davis in the 1960s, the gallery sought to showcase underrepresented artists of color, who were otherwise disregarded.

When LA Times art critic William Wilson said that he had not attended the Brockman Gallery because he was not interested in writing about group shows (a statement easily refuted), John Outterbridge responded by saying, “Mr. Wilson, why don’t you honestly tell everyone that you have not come to Brockman Gallery simply because you don’t come on that side of town? … The people that you write about are the people that you drink wine with, and we’re not those people. So just be honest and say that you have not come to the gallery because you are uncomfortable in coming into the realm of what the gallery represents.”[1]

John Outterbridge. Remnants of an Apron, Lost, 2002; mixed media. Courtesy of Tilton Gallery, NY. Photo: Lenae Day.

Rag Man consists mostly of Outterbridge’s newer work from the past eight years, with a few older pieces scattered throughout. The first wall features fourteen mixed-media sculptures from 2000–12. With titles like Dreads, Hooked, and Caged, the range of materials includes wood, metal, bone, horn, ripped fabric, hair, paint, and found objects. In Remnants of an Apron, Lost (2002), the head of an African Ashanti doll becomes a wide platter with dreads growing out of a dome-like head. Dreads seem to be growing out of many of these talismanic, toy-like works, anthropomorphizing them into the bodies of black Americans. I Mus Speak (2008) is a mallet-shaped form with a ponytail of dreads and rags. The mallet, which resembles a wooden horse or mule, is a symbol that Outterbridge draws on throughout much of his work to talk about the history of American capitalism being built on the backs of slaves. For Outterbridge, the mule is a “symbol of the black body, courageously searching for absolute freedom.”[2]

John Outterbridge. Jive Ass Bird, 1971; mixed media. Courtesy of Tilton Gallery, NY. Photo: Lenae Day.

The exhibition also includes two pieces from Outterbridge’s original soft-sculpture Rag Man series of the 1970s: Jive Ass Bird (1970) and Case in Point (1970). Case in Point appears to be a large duffel bag made out of smaller, sausage-like bags that could alternatively be interpreted as artillery shells. Underneath a military brown wash, an underpainting of neon colors practically screams to be let out. A Greyhound bus tag reads: “People travel like packages,” suggesting that human beings are nothing more than baggage. As a war veteran, Outterbridge knew many men who died abroad, only to be shipped back home. The piece also indicates the transportation of slaves, brought to the U.S. as the property of other men—or in other words, as packages.

Across the back wall, Outterbridge’s new Rag and Bag Idiom (2012) series calls back to the original soft sculptures. These pieces are bright, as though the neon rainbow underpainting of Case in Point were finally free to express itself. In this new series, there is a sincere feeling of optimism and youthful energy to be found in the works’ playful shapes, bright colors, and formal arrangement.

John Outterbridge. Rag and Bag Idiom I, 2012; mixed media. Courtesy of Tilton Gallery, NY.

At age 83, it is only in the past five years that Outterbridge has received the kind of recognition and praise he deserves as the influential and talented artist he is. With recent exhibitions in New York and LA, Outterbridge also participated in the Venice Biennale and received a lifetime achievement award from the California African American Museum. John Outterbridge was on the front line of activism in art in the 1960s and ’70s, and it is only fitting that he be back there now during the inaugural year of this vibrant community art space.

John Outterbridge: Rag Man is on view at Art + Practice in Los Angeles through February 27, 2016.

[1] African-American Artists of Los Angeles: John W. Outterbridge. Interviewed by Richard Candida Smith; 1989–90. Online Archive of California. Department of Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles, 2009. Accessed February 13, 2016, http://www.oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb229006xm;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00020&toc.id=0&brand=oac4

[2] John Outterbridge: Rag Man. Curators Anne Ellegood and Jamillah James (Los Angeles: Art + Practice Foundation, December 2015), exhibition catalog.