Bruce Davenport, Jr.

Louis B. James is pleased to present The Dapper Bruce Lafitte Does His Hero Mike Tyson, a solo show of new works on paper by Bruce Davenport, Jr.

Davenport has created a new body of work using Mike Tyson as the subject. Based on his hero-worship for the fighter growing up – and connecting a multi-generational love for boxing, from the artist’s grandfather’s affection for Joe Louis, his uncle’s admiration for Muhammad Ali and Davenport, Jr’s own love of Tyson – The Dapper Bruce Lafitte Does His Hero Mike Tyson furthers the artist’s exploration into family, community, celebrity and legacy.

Similar to the artists other series of Marching Bands, the Prison and Lafitte Projects, here Davenport Jr. blends dense scenes of personal memories, historical events and figures alongside hand-written scrawls referencing not only Tyson but the artist’s own history. Blending pop and folk-art traditions, this is the artist’s first foray into the absence of color, insisting on pushing the work beyond the bright and seemingly whimsical imagery for which he’s known. Leaving intentional squares of uncolored text and images in much of the work presented here we see Davenport Jr. as more than a skilled draftsman but also as an editor, making conscious choices to remove the color for which he’s known and let the line drawings and text stand on their own.

In our basement-level gallery we present a collection of ongoing work from the Marching Bands, Prison, Lafitte Projects and Indian series, a collection of work focusing specifically on the culture and history of New Orleans, of which Davenport Jr.is a life-long resident.

Bruce Davenport Jr., (born 1972, New Orleans, LA) has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally including solo shows at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum, Biloxi, MS; Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans; VACANT, Tokyo; as well as a solo-presentation at the Outsider Art Fair, Paris 2014. The gallery will also be presenting Davenport’s work at the Outsider Art Fair NYC in January of 2015. His work has twice been included in the Prospect Biennial as well as in exhibitions at BALLROOM MARFA, Dieu Donné, New York, NY and the Visual Arts Center a the University of Texas at Austin. In 2010 He was the recipient of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts: Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Fellowship and in 2009 received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award.