In a solo show of new sculptures, turning on the hanging bronze bells that have been part of her oeuvre since 2017, artist Davina Semo gives us a colorful, clever, and artful exhibition titled, “A Serious Celebration” at the San Francisco-based Jessica Silverman gallery. On view from Jan. 9 to Feb. 22, 2025, the bells are a further exploration of the artist’s favored form, exploring new materials, shapes, paints, patinas, clappers, and strike tones.
Per the “A Serious Celebration” gallery catalog:
Although metal bells have been around for 4000 years, Semo’s works often shine with newness or speak the language of science fiction with ethereal layers of translucent paint, as Cocoon and Pacific do. When Semo chases a patina down a rabbit hole, her bells can feel antediluvian, like Talisman, or vaguely medieval as in Babble. Other works are oddly timeless. Entice and Spellbind, for instance, combine novel crocheted surfaces with colors long associated with oxidization. Enamor and Enchant, as their titles suggest, allude to the strangely natural or supernatural. With thoughtful dexterity, Semo uses these longstanding tellers of time as opportunities to comment on the history of texture and the subtleties of reflection.
Semo’s sculptures also embrace the importance of bells as musical instruments with a range of deep, full chimes. Their tonal scales are one of the reasons why bells are often clustered in groups. Big Ben, for example, which is housed in the clock tower of London’s Houses of Parliament, hangs with four other bells that ring out the quarter hours. In pursuit of greater sonic variation, Semo made six of her ceiling-mounted works in a traditional bell foundry, which casts in loam (not wax) and uses a bronze alloy with a higher tin content. The distinct visual personalities of Semo’s bells reverberate in the acoustic realm. As Shakespeare once wrote, “He hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; for what his heart thinks, his tongue speaks.”
The exhibition also features large bronze wall works, which are the sculptor’s idiosyncratic response to both abstract expressionist “action painting” and the legacy of mirrors, which were made from polished copper and bronze until the Romans invented glass mirrors in the first century CE. Magic Mirror is a large-scale work consisting of eight gleaming bronze panels punctuated with patinated circles. Reflecting Faces, meanwhile, consists of twelve polished bronze disks arranged in the round like the numbers on a clock. Manifestations rather than representations of time, these bas-relief “paintings” are alive with Semo’s artistic process. They encourage us to reflect on reflections and consider our patterns of looking.
Semo enjoys the alchemy of creation, melting and pouring a hot fluid that becomes rock-solid as it cools. “The process is always a revelation,” she explains. “I love the physicality and the sense of being grounded in realness.” In an age of disembodied artificial intelligence and augmented realities that fade in a day, the materiality and longevity of Semo’s sculptures offer respite from the distracting froth of contemporary communications.
For more on the solo show, including detailed images of selected works and to inquire about the artwork, pricing, and availability, visit the Jessica Silverman online gallery.
About the artist: Davina Semo
Davina Semo (b. 1981, Washington, D.C.) has a BA in Visual Arts and Creative Writing from Brown University and an MFA from University of California, San Diego. Semo has been awarded many public commissions, including “Reverberation” at Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 1, New York, organized by Public Art Fund (2021), and an installation of three large bells at Powder Mountain, the outdoor art park founded by Reed Hastings, Netflix co-founder, in Eden, Utah (forthcoming in 2025). Semo is the subject of a solo exhibition at SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, in 2025.
She has previously enjoyed a solo at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, and numerous group exhibitions at MCA Denver, Colorado; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; SOMArts, San Francisco; White Columns, New York; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. Her work is included in collections at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Massachusetts; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; and the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, Claremont, California. Semo lives and works in Los Angeles.
Cover image: View of artist Davina Semo's “A Serious Celebration” installation at the San Francisco-based Jessica Silverman gallery. Courtesy: Jessica Silverman.
