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.

JON DAVIS
United States

EDUCATION

1990 Lansdale Catholic HS

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2023
“The Chronicle is the fable for these timid eyes,” Mifa Galley, Miami, FL

2017
“Locals Only,” Dianna Lowenstein Gallery, Miami, FL

2015
Context Art Miami 55 Bellechase Galleria, Miami, FL
55 Bellechase gallery show, Paris, France
YIA, Paris, France

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2021
“Brokedown Palace,” Fabien Castanier Gallery, Miami, FL

2017
Jon Davis 55 Bellechase Gallery, Miami, FL

2016
“Three Sided Dream,” University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, Maine
“Jon Davis solo show,” 55 Bellechase Gallery, Paris, France

2015
“Jon Davis,” 55 Bellechase Gallery, Paris, France

2013
“The Origin of Originality,” Kavachnina Contemporary, Miami, FL

2009
Dale Nally Gallery, Miami, FL

2008
“Lost Luggage,” Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, FL

2006
Damien B Art Gallery; Art Basel, Miami, FL
“Time Capsules,” Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art, Jacksonville, FL

2004
Carousel Art Space, Art Basel, Miami, FL
Miami Beach Cinematheque: Art Basel, Miami Beach, FL
“Ravage,” Damien B Art Gallery, Miami, FL

2002
Kracer Art, Miami, FL

1998
The Pentagon Gallery, Cleveland, OH

COLLECTIONS
University of Maine Museum of Art
Vero Beach Museum of Art