Exhibitions
Turner G. Davis: Fantastic Worlds
January 31, 2008 - March 23, 2008
Turner G. Davis, Woman vs. Dog, 2005
Gouache on paper, 15 x 21 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Riva Yares Gallery
While still an "emerging" artist, Turner G. Davis's work demonstrates the inventive capacity and range of accomplishment one expects from a mature career. As well, he is unusually prolific and elastic in his practice -- experimental in terms of style, medium and technique, and with regard to the characters and scenes he renders so imaginatively.
Davis's oeuvre is comprised by incandescent fairy tales rendered through
the distorting lens of adulthood, possessed of clear-eyed innocence in
tension with the equivocating forces of lived experience and darker
imaginings. This sense of contrary energies in tension, and of surprise
forged in that tension, is perhaps the signature characteristic of
Davis's work to date. Deeply engaged with figuration and provocatively
narrative, Davis's images present myriad realms of fantasy wherein
meaning is implied rather than articulated directly. His images --
whether Baroquely designed, lavishly layered and finished, or
intentionally simplistic -- suggest transmutation, sleights of hand and
cloaked truths; a world of little jokes and mysteries, of childlike
wonder tinged with Gothic nightmare.
See more of the Turner G. Davis show in our web gallery
A full-color illustrated catalog, Fantastic Worlds: Turner G. Davis with essay by Chief Curator Dr. Lisa Fischman, is available for $24.95 plus sales tax in the museum gift shop.
Turner G. Davis is represented by the Riva Yares Gallery
Read the Tucson Weekly feature, Incandescent Fairy Tales
Visit our Exhibition History page for information on past exhibitions at UAMA.