Ian Davenport

Mirrored enamel

2022

Ian Davenport is best known for his colorful “puddle” paintings. To make them, the artist meticulously pours hundreds of thin acrylic lines down a canvas, and they artfully pool and swerve at the bottom. All of Davenport’s work embraces experimentation: He has used a variety of industrial and everyday tools—including wind machines, hypodermic syringes, and watering cans—to manipulate paint and draw as much attention to the process of artmaking as to the finished works themselves. Davenport graduated from Goldsmiths College in London in 1988, the same year he featured in the “Freeze” exhibition curated by fellow Young British Artist Damien Hirst. In the years since, Davenport has exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Galleria Nazionale Arte Moderna in Rome, the Hammer Museum, and Kunsthal Rotterdam, among other institutions. On the secondary market, the price point for Davenport’s work has reached six figures.