“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” A proud example of the latter, Ian Davenport tests the properties of household paint—pouring it, dripping it, blowing it, using electric fans, anything but brushing it. He began this practice in the late ’80s and in 1991 became, at twenty-five, the youngest-ever Turner Prize nominee. Having perfected a mode of colorful post-painterly abstraction that winks to theory-heads and aesthetes alike, he’s lately gone gigantic: Davenport’s recent fifty-nine-foot-long wall work at Tate Britain was a delirious multihued parade of syringed dribbles, and a similar centerpiece is planned for this, his first retrospective. Ikon director Jonathan Watkins and Tony Godfrey provide catalogue essays. Hedgehog? Sounds foxy to me.

— Martin Herbert