Ian Davis

A move away from reality to a more surreal state, is ongoing in Ian Davis’ (b. 1972, Indianapolis, US) eerily prescient dystopian visions. His work charts the follies of man and his compositions circle around repetition & unplanned narratives creating humorous and downright surreal settings.

Davis chronicles moments of human gatherings, often immediately before or after an event. As highly condensed and finely rendered his compositions are, nothing is revealed about the triggers or the aftermath. Instead Davis prefers to allow for an element of ambiguity concerning his visual imagery, first setting the stage and then allowing a recurrent activity to unfold within its environs.

The identity of the tall, lanky men, who almost always appear in dark suits or lab coats, also remains obscure. They are faceless, supra-individual figures – placeholders of a bureaucratic society. These bureaucrats never turn up on their own. They come in herds and packs, and as such the artist likes to arrange them somewhat ornamentally. Many of Davis’s works feature enormous spaces filled with repetitive geometrical details, such as the vast rows of computer banks or dining tables, which evoke the tedium and drudgery of present-day industry.

Rooted in meticulous, intricate drawings, Davis’ open-ended narratives take place within a looming apocalypse, communicating the collective anxiety of contemporary society, grappling with a moment of overwhelming political turmoil.