“Painting does something to your soul that nothing else can,” said Noah Davis. “It’s visceral and immediate and is always readdressed in new ways that keep it relevant.” Davis died in 2015, when he was 32, leaving us his moody and poignant paintings. He looked at vintage photographs from African-American culture, and with casual brushwork painted eerie, sometimes surreal images: a girl in an elephant mask; two youths lying on a sofa, listless. Phantoms and mystic figures tell tender stories in these works. Fifty of Davis’s paintings, sculptures, and works on paper are now on view at the Barbican Centre. —Elena Clavarino

Travels to: the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (June 8 – August 31, 2025); the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2026)