Barcelona-based Scotsman Jack Davidson belongs to a cadre of artists around the world who run occasional, informal, barely-commercial if not non-profit gallery spaces in their studios or, in his case, his residence. (Matthew Day Jackson in Brooklyn and Merlin James and Carol Rhodes in Glasgow are others who come to mind.) This arrangement provides Davidson, as host, with an opportunity to live with and study in-depth an artist he wants to promote and associate himself with, he says. It’s good karma, therefore, that he should find himself on the receiving end of such civilized practice in New York City at Sometimes (works of art), the aptly-named ad hoc project space run by James Siena in rooms in his studio building in downtown Manhattan. Davidson’s sunny cool abstraction bounces biomorphism against a kind of heraldic precisionism as in his enigmatically titled canvas, We’re up all night to get lucky, 2013. DAVID COHEN
Jack Davidson, We’re up all night to get lucky, 2013. Oil on canvas, 52 x 198 cms. Courtesy of the artist.