Isaiah Davis Makes Metal—and Masculinity—Seem Soft

Isaiah Davis’s Midtown Manhattan studio was once Christian Louboutin’s atelier, and it still has red carpeting that evokes the lacquered undersides of the designer’s signature stilettos. When I visited Davis’s studio this past winter, that red peeked out from under heaps of black and brown leather the artist was working with.Leather appeared in Davis’s 2021 show at New York’s Participant Inc: White American Flag (2021) is a wall work with stars and stripes but