Kenturah Davis ’02 displayed her solo collection “Blur in the Interest of Precision” at the opening of the Matthew Brown Gallery Los Angeles in Hollywood Jan. 26. A longtime Los Angeles native, Davis recently graduated from Yale with her Masters in Fine Arts. According to art and art history professor Linda Lyke, Davis uses a stamping method to explore ideas on the construction of identity as well as how we define ourselves.
Davis said her artistic process starts by laying a grid with graphite and then embossing the paper, which adds texture. According to Matthew Brown, gallery owner, Davis’ method of working grid by grid creates an abstraction because the viewer needs to step back to see the whole image. Davis said she used lettered stamps to metaphorize the grey area of language. She also said she experimented with using charcoal in her portraits. Davis described the intentionality of using blurry images, which stretches out time on the surface.
“One of the reasons Kenturah’s work is so compelling is that she combines great skill in drawing in a unique faction with a powerful conceptual idea of what she envisions the meaning of the portrait to be,” Lyke said via email.
Along with portraits of herself, family and friends, the exhibit also includes ceramic pieces. Davis explained that the ceramics were something she was experimenting with to represent the body as a vessel.
“After they were fired, I then made sort of a block where they could smoke with this incense that I burned and wrapped it in silk,” Davis said. “Eventually, the scent faded away and, I think of it as, the life span of that ceramic. It, again, is a more metaphorical idea around the body and states of the body that are at the edge of our perception or not perceptible at all.”
According to Brown, it took him about 6 months to find the location of the gallery. Brown said Davis prepared for the show in about five months when it would have normally taken a year. Davis explained that she worked on the show while she was also teaching photo processes in printmaking at Occidental during the Fall 2018 semester, according to Lyke. Davis will also be teaching at Occidental again in the Fall 2019 semester.
The gallery itself received a warm welcome from the public, according to Brown.
“It’s been pretty overwhelming, in a positive way,” Brown said. “The support at the opening was pretty unbelievable, and just the support from collectors and curators. We were open during the art sale last week, so we had people from out of town come into the show. So it’s been pretty overwhelmingly positive, as far as people’s reaction to the work itself.”
Davis’ other works are located in various locations around Los Angeles, according to Lyke. In 2014, Davis said she was commissioned to make artwork for the new LAX-Crenshaw line that will connect the airport to South Los Angeles.
“I actually finished my part of it. I made drawings for the downtown Inglewood station, that, I believe, is the closest station to the new football stadium that they’re building in Inglewood,” Davis said. “That, in theory, will open in 2022. I created ten large-scale images, portraits, of people who live, work or have some relationship with Inglewood.”
Some of her drawings from the show will go to in the California African American Museum, according to Davis. Davis also said the pieces would be included in a show called Plum Wine, a companion show to the Charles White exhibit at LACMA. She is also doing a fellowship program at NXTHVN, an art collective started by Titus Kaphar and Jonathan Brand for artists and curators. According to Davis, the fellowship gives the curators and artists studio space as well as a stipend for their art.
Lyke spoke to Davis’ experience at Occidental and said she was able to grow and learn more about art theory and criticism.
“During her time at Occidental, she was influenced early on by studying in the MSI program, and by her experience in studio art classes, where she experimented with materials and process and the study of art theory and criticism,” Lyke said via email.
Lyke explained that Davis’ senior comprehensive project focused around theories of race and gender. As well as her artwork now being displayed in a gallery, it is also present on campus.
“Kenturah was featured in OxyArt 125, (2012) an exhibition of our most accomplished young alumni. For the show, Kenturah proposed and completed a wall-sized drawing of one of the first African-American women to graduate from Occidental College, Janet Stafford,” Lyke said via email. “The drawing is formed from the text of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man which she read in MSI. The college purchased this drawing and it now hangs in the Dean’s office.”
