PROFILE
IAN DAVIS, DYSTOPIA IN PAINT — WORDS LAWRENCE GIPE IMAGES COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
A new painting by Ian Davis, Supermarket (2017), encompasses a number of themes that frame this artist’s compelling dystopian vision. There is the content of the picture itself, an eerily sterile warehouse of identical stacked goods, marching away from the viewer in one-point perspective. The image is distinctively Davis’, but reverberations from history inevitably emerge. One is reminded of Jacques Tati’s Playtime, where the filmmaker greeted the advent of automation with suspicion as well as humor. 28
