EMILY DAVIDSON

DUETS

January 24 — March 23, 2024

Opening Reception: Friday, January 23, 5—8PM

San Francisco: 349 Geary Street

VIEW WORKS

Olympia is pleased to present its second San Francisco exhibition, Duets, featuring new paintings by Emily Davidson. This marks Davidson’s first show with Olympia.

Duets explores the concept of twinness—both literal and figurative—through a series of “twin paintings” created from close observations of familiar images drawn from Davidson’s everyday life. These paired compositions emerge from a dynamic lived experience, reflecting the artist’s process of mothering  identical twin sons, born in January 2022. In the early months of motherhood, Davidson’s experience of “serving two” began to shape her artistic vision and her approach to time, repetition, and duality.

Each pair of paintings presents two versions of the same composition, mirrored and subtly altered to examine how the same moment or object transforms when viewed through different lenses. Davidson’s work is rooted in the urban landscape, capturing images from the routines of daily life: an ad on a local bodega, an abstracted New York State Lottery sign, or a passing truck with an advertisement on its back.

In ICE, the first twin paintings in the series, Davidson’s attention was caught by a translucent ice bag that tumbled in her direction outside. Pinning it to her studio wall, she responded to  the banality of the object and its visual possibilities as an image of light, shadow, and color. UTZ originated from Davidson’s daily stroller walks, during which she regularly encountered a vintage Utz truck on its delivery route. The paired paintings focus on the iconic image of the Utz girl, where the zigzag of the chip bag began to resemble a horizon in a landscape. Over time, Davidson observed the girl’s hand slipping into an abstracted void space.

Davidson’s twin observations invite us into a world where time, space, and experience are fluid and collaborative. The exhibition offers a visual meditation on shifting moments and the intertwined rhythms of motherhood.

Emily Davidson (b. 1987, Indianapolis, Indiana) lives and works in New York.

Davidson has exhibited her work in solo shows such as Near Home at GERTRUDE, (Great Barrington, 2020); and Dallas Art Fair with Marvin Gardens (Dallas, 2019). Selected group exhibitions include The Wrong Tree at Dunes, (Portland, 2025); I Was Not Born Alone at Transmitter (Brooklyn, 2024); Double Lift at David Peterson Gallery (Minneapolis, 2024); Arcadian Revival at Ten Barn Farm (Ghent, 2024); Currents at Morris Adjmi Architects (New York, 2023).

Davidson holds an MFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art (Philadelphia, 2011), and a BFA in Painting with honors from the Art Academy of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, 2009). She has also studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunst (Munich, Summer Study) and in the New York Studio Program at Parsons, The New School (Brooklyn, 2007).

She has also held guest artist lectures at Columbia University, New York (2016); Rutgers University, New Brunswick (2017); Temple University, Philadelphia (2017); and the New York Studio School, New York (2017). Awards include the Stephen H. Wilder Travel Grant (2009).