sonia louise davis: a promise, a portal, possibility

HESSE FLATOW is pleased to present the opening of a promise, a portal, possibility, a solo exhibition of new works by sonia louise davis, marking her second solo presentation with the gallery. A series of eight new tufted soft paintings, a steel sculptural instrument, a neon, and hand drawn wall text, will take over the ground level at 77 Franklin, enveloping the gallery in works that explore the tenor and boundaries of improvisation. Together, they establish a space in which presence becomes both material and measure. davis has been in dialogue with writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts in the months leading up to the show and invited her to contribute the text below.

No Sequence

You enter through a frame measured to contain the breadth of being: in a body, in space, in time. What follows are notations – varieties of presence, sometimes pinned closely to ground, other times whipped loose; a topography of tone and texture. A line is comprised of repetitions and informed by what is nearby, sometimes a wave is obscured or interrupted en route to its finality. While sonia louise davis refers to the paintings as a “record of where I’m at in the making” and thus a document of moments, the viewer is invited to slip out of linearity – going beyond ordered time. Out there, the eye travels amid forms and fields – landing here, catapulting away. We come to rest where blue meets blue, or scatter on a purple’s antic path. The suite of circles we meet are openings, perhaps you can tumble into one hole and exit through another. Can you move as fast or slow as a painting goes? There is no sequence: the transcription is not this, then, next but now, now, again. They operate via a kind of propulsive energy. Embodied and never designed, these are gestures of the bodymind working to “outpace the doubt.”

For davis, drawing is a way of dancing and what we are seeing are songs – some she has listened to and others she has sung. The paintings continue a yearslong commitment to improvisation that has accompanied her journeys in form, whether movements or sounds captured only by air, or images released by shadow and light. To consider how these ephemeralities are rendered into substance we must concern ourselves, as the artist does, with that materiality at the heart of the improvisational impulse – a tradition and practice that moves in search of survival and ways of being free. She reminds us that one must be prepared to improvise.

The works shown in a promise, a portal, possibility were made in davis’s Manhattan studio and at Stoneleaf Retreat, a family-oriented artist residency in upstate New York. She relates some paths traveled repeatedly, what is beckoned and received by changing light, and what she has noticed on the way. Regarding the seasonal eruptions of a familiar field, she notes – more than variety or color – the rhythms arising and receding in turn. We can also attune our attention in this manner, greeting and releasing the temporarily visible. Only in this way can it be held. So we return to a set of fleeting days, a sudden color and the end of a color. Pacing fast, pacing slow, but keeping in motion. It is crucial to recall that davis composes her pieces by working their reverse side, coming only later to see the movements, choices, and moments form a whole. So we meet her there, at the first encounter – stepping around from the back of the frame, a zone governed by some kind of second sight. Or stepping through, across a threshold: seeing anew. An appearance, an awaiting, an arrival after which everything changed and from which you cannot look away.