per website – Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to present Muddy Water, a solo exhibition of new sculptures by Karon Davis. This show takes it’s name from Bessie Smith’s 1927 recording of Muddy Water, a song about the Great Mississippi Flood. The body of work reflects on the effects of climate change, and subsequent migration and displacement, offering a glimpse into the experiences people encounter during natural disasters. Davis continues to work with full scale plaster-cast figures. Intentionally their armatures remain visible, juxtaposing the inner strength of the sculptures against their fragile exteriors; she likens the process to ‘reassembling broken souls’. Some of the figures are inspired by images Davis discovered while reading news coverage of the recent events in Montecito, Puerto Rico & Houston (to name but a few), others are imagined from personal experience of evacuating her home during the 2017 Thomas Fire. Woven into the exhibition as a whole is the sense of immediacy, crisis and loss, which is drawn from having to abandon cherished property in the blink of an eye. Muddy Water is Karon Davis’ second solo exhibition at Wilding Cran Gallery.
About Karon Davis Karon Davis has a wide-ranging multimedia practice that encompasses installation, sculpture, film, photography and performance. Davis grew up the child of Broadway performers in New York City, trained at USC film school, and credits her late husband Noah Davis with teaching her much of her cross medium practice. Her work draws on elements of performance, theatricality, and mythology as it explores issues of humanity, survival, and ways of being. Davis is also the co-founder of The Underground Museum, a cultural hub and urban oasis located in Arlington Heights that serves low-to-moderate income communities in Los Angeles and cultivates the hope that increasing access to art will inspire, educate, and transform lives. Davis’s work has been included in several museum exhibitions internationally including: Starless Midnight, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Newcastle, UK); NEW SUNS, Bonnefantenmuseum (Maastricht, NL); and Reclamation! Pan-African Works from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection at the Taubman Museum of Art (Roanoke, VA). Recent gallery exhibitions include, PAIN MANAGEMENT at Wilding Cran Gallery (Los Angeles); POWER at Sprüth Magers (Los Angeles); HOMEWARD BOUND, Nicodim Gallery (Los Angeles); Ours is a City of Writers, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; and PEOPLE at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, (New York). Davis is a recipient, of The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2017 Biennial Grant. Her work is the collection of The Brooklyn Museum and Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection.
