King's Gate 1978

Gene Davis made King's Gate with acrylic on canvas, and what I see are these very even vertical stripes, almost like hard-edge Minimalism, but with a twist. I can imagine Davis in his studio, carefully placing each stripe, one after the other, with such deliberation. And yet, there's something kind of wonky about it, you know? Like the stripes are not perfectly uniform. There’s a subtle sense of rhythm and variation in the color. It's kind of hypnotic, like looking at a gate or a curtain. The way the stripes create a kind of optical illusion, where the colors seem to vibrate and shift. Davis was really interested in the way colors interact, and this piece is a great example of that. For me, this piece is part of a larger conversation among painters—one artist responds to another, riffing on ideas and techniques across time.