Reggie Davis
- Editor at Titan Contemporary Publishing
- Jan 1
- 2 min read
Reggie Davis is an analogue digital and video artist who has displayed his video works at The Phillip K. Dick film festival in New York City and Los Angeles as well as the Colortape International Film Festival in Australia. He is the recipient of several grants including from the San Francisco Arts Commission and Senior Cohort Grant from The African American Cultural Center.
These digital artworks by Reggie Davis are largely derived from video stills and digitally altered in programs such as Photoshop and Procreate. The prints are meant to be displayed on plexiglass, emanating a crystallized and glass-like effect to the digital works. From prismatic and angular geometric distortions to fashionable models and brands disfigured and reconstructed to represent realms and dimension of other worlds, these configurations represent digital capacity stretched beyond limitations. There remains a form of digital escapism within his work, as if the viewer is meant to enter a hallucinogenic state amidst the crystalized slabs of his funneled compositions as our eyes are taken vertically and horizontally as if traversing a futuristic escalator or elevator. The cosmic and science fiction connotations comes from the escapist other-wordly dimensions from these diamond-like substances and surfaces which seem to offer a reflection and refraction of light.
As we explore Reggie Davis portfolio, we will find both figurative and abstract elements. They both work equally as poignant and relevant. His figurative fashionable and brand-name motifs explore topics of consumerism being experiences as planes of nihilistic pleasure. These blurred and distorted figures become accentuated through minimalist digitized landscapes along with a cynical logo. Reggie’s clever commentary on fashion as well as capitalism reveals both a celebration and distortion of our perceptions based on consumerism. The abstracted geometrical pieces are typically formed in the shapes of diamonds and spheres, as if to represent jewelry and glitz as well as glamour. These forms become further accentuated through colors and illusion of platinum and diamond-like surfaces. In all forms of his art, Reggie Davis reveals a lasting tendency towards exploring the dichotomy between reality and illusion, between digital realms and physical ones.
BALMAIN - Paris (pictured above) depicts a mannequin in a manner similar to a cyborg with vaporwave-like aesthetics of motion blurs and color schematics based on neons and pastels. The figures dress, which appears like a disco ball, and her glass-like epidermis offers an illusory aspect and distortion to how we perceive consumerism and fashion.
A cerebral artist, Reggie Davis creates work rich in interpretative analysis which is deeply relevant to our times in addressing materialism, globalism, materials, digitization, and celestial elements. Through his unique process in digital and video applications, a realm of vivid distortion becomes revealed to us on multiple levels and angles. In both figurative and non-figurative elements, the viewer embarks on a journey through a gifted imagination who not only bends light and space with the whims of his analogue mouse, but also reveals clever social commentary on the information age along with all the nihilism and hedonistic pleasure from digital realms.
