VAUGHN DAVIS JR.

BLACK ORCHIDS

EXHIBITION DATES:
MAY 1 - JUNE 7, 2025

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Romer Young Gallery is pleased to present its third solo exhibition with St. Louis artist Vaughn Davis Jr., Black Orchids features a new series of color soaked abstractions centered around the concept of beauty and desirability. There will be an opening reception for the artist on Thursday, May 1st, from 6-8pm.

Black Orchids presents a collection of six large, pigment-soaked abstractions. Inspired by the orchid's journey through dormancy, budding, blooming, wilting, and the moment when the petals fall away, this exhibition explores the delicate balance between the tenets of Davis’ artistic practice and the life cycle of an orchid.

Davis soaks and stains the unprimed canvas with pools of acrylic pigment allowing the paint to merge with the weave of the canvas. Pigment after pigment, the surface is slowly built up. Each new beginning only to be undone by a subsequent series of intuitive and expressive actions. Through the tears, cuts, and rips in the canvases, the works are a personal reflection on the delicate unraveling and reassembling of the self through the lens of growth, loss, and renewal. Shaped from the artist’s individual experience of life and relationships, each splatter, spill, dye, tear, and fray adds or uncovers a new layer of expression. ‘The fragility and resilience of the orchid mirror the complexities of human relationships—endings, breakthroughs, separation, and connection— and each piece invites the viewer to confront the vulnerability and strength embedded in the art of becoming and unbecoming.’ The resulting canvases—unfurled, raw and beautiful—emerge as nascent new forms, exposed and wanting to be seen.

Vaughn Davis Jr. lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his BFA with Departmental Honors in Sculpture from Webster University in St. Louis. He will begin his MFA at Columbia University in the Fall of 2025. Recent museum exhibitions include a solo presentation at the Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MO. He has been awarded the Delta Voices: Artists of the Mid-South by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. His work has been exhibited at Dragon Crab Turtle, Monaco Gallery, The Luminary in St. Louis MO, Gazebo Gallery, Kent, OH; among others. He has had solo exhibitions at Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco, CA;  Philip Slein Gallery and the Center of Creative Arts both located in St. Louis. and was included  in the group exhibition, “A Magical Day at Ditch!” at Tripoli Gallery, Wainscott, NY, curated by St. Louis-based painter, Katherine Bernhardt.

For more information, please contact Joey Piziali at joey@romeryounggallery.com or 415.550.7483

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