Robert Davis

American, b. 1970, Rob Davis’s abstract, textural paintings incorporate addictive substances such as wine, cigarette ash, and coffee, gesturing toward experiences of the real world. In earlier work he collaborated with Michael Langlois to produce classically informed paintings and mixed-media installations, through which the two explored such fraught topics as desire, identity, martyrdom, and politics. By working, in their words, as a “tag team,” they challenged the model of the individual artist as progenitor of his own work. Together they scoured analog and digital sources for images that they translated into photorealistic and surrealistic paintings. These became part of immersive environments, within which Davis and Langlois challenged viewers to consider the connections between disparate images and new perspectives on historical and contemporary events they reveal.