Jon Davis

United States

From his period when found photographs informed his narrative, Jon has expressed the nuanced, often untranslatable, realities that exist within the human experience. In the thread of his work where traces remain, it’s like a distant but familiar relative appears amidst his new body of work. Jon brings this concept closer to home. He renders a deeper, more personal, immediate, and almost intimate voyeuristic approach to the quotidian.

Featuring imagery he has captured himself, often with medium format, sometimes with what he has at hand, on the unique and quirky streets of Miami, which he calls home, Jon’s conversation with the present unfolds within the context of Art History. He provides his ubiquitous nod to reference what is often obscure, to bring it to light. In this way he translates his conceptually based process through splintered fragments of time and place often floating without foundation before our gaze.

In this way his work transcends perceptions, as he cuts away at the boundaries, that through having been merely captured at a still point in time, delineate a past and present. Jon distills and refines his imagery in this way, as if grappling with fixed conventions and playing with them to coax an understanding of contrasts while highlighting synergies.

Jon’s work has multiple planes that define a sense of chronological depth as if a Muybridge zoopraxiscope might render the gestures movement, coming toward or moving away from the viewer rather than across the view. His collage is often on many planes, and by being mounted on layers of often transparent glass, other times colorfields as surface, creates a scenario, a mirage of sorts. Whereas when those layers are rendered on one plane, the work is almost frontal in its approach

A working artist, Jon is self-taught, developing an art practice that continually develops a distinctly unique visual vernacular. Jon surfs inspiration and waxes philosophical, while standing barefoot waiting for no particular answer at all.

His references are subtle and you might miss them if you are less learned in the history of art. But his work can be understood on another more personal level. Life is rendered and recognized whether a Saint Sebastian, a nude in a raincoat, a pistol rearing young boy, or any of his other cast of characters who have graced, what you might consider ready-mades; devices as visual tools, gadgets to see through the often farcical canons we hold.

WORKS

Fly Me to the Moon

2024
Acrylic on paper and glass, mounted in wood,  55″ x 48″

The Call #4

2020
Mixed media , 21″ x 15″

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Jon davis

United States

Over the past 25 years, I have been obsessed with the dismantling and rebuilding of images. They are just a fraction of time but with a story that is much more than the 2-D image you see. There’s a before and an after, a subject, photographer, intent, accident, situation, and so many aspects to choose.

My early works leaned toward a more voyeuristic approach with the use of found photos and appropriated images. By cutting and juxtaposing these multiple images on several layers of glass, I was able to create a theatrical environment in which they could merge into one story.

Within the past few years, I have made the transition to using my own photos (both film and digital)with fewer juxtapositions. Mainly, focused on the subject itself. These photos range from family and friends to random street shots.

This move to a more personal imagery strips away the voyeuristic and lets me concentrate on the photo itself. How important is it? Does it convey a feeling, a moment… just for you or others. If so, how can I enhance it, is it worth being altered, if so why? What am I trying to say? And then trying to do that while everyone has an infinite photo collection in your pocket.

In removing certain characteristics and past techniques, I can deconstruct and reconstruct the images with much more freedom. layering the photo on top of itself multiple times, then disregarding some aspects of the image and enhancing others, the introduction of color fields and space, I am able to create a more in depth and realization of that fraction of time.

No two people ever see or interpret the world in the same way, but the world they see is their world; I’m just trying to show bits of mine.