jose dávila
directional energies
12 january - 13 march 2020
jose dávila, directional energies, 2019, installation view. photo by kevin todora. courtesy of the artist and dallas contemporary.
Born in Mexico in 1974 sculptor Jose Dávila lives and works in Guadalajara, Mexico. Trained as an architect, Dávila explores issues of form and content via large-scale installations, each unique composition of varying linear dimensions, paradoxical alignments and pictorial configurations.
The site-specific work for Dallas Contemporary resembles the artist’s studio in Guadalajara. Dávila makes use of the museum’s open floor plan, industrial concrete foundation and high ceilings as part of his creative process. Using locally sourced materials from Dallas-area quarries, the artist will create balancing and stacked site-specific sculptures composed of steel I-beams, cables, large boulders and objects.
Museum visitors will stand beneath typically hidden structural details and experience Dávila’s visual negotiation of materials through the carefully placed, and seemingly precarious suspension of objects--a metaphor for the constant struggle of opposing forces; a representation of the friction between modernity’s tendency to homogenize and humanity’s need for diversity. The erratic, freestanding structures defy the formal order and repetition commonly associated with modernity and minimalism. Displayed in their natural state of oxidation, the angled lines of color and stacked I-Beams and rocks disrupt the clean precision of the modernist grid.
Dávila has exhibited at the Museo del Novecento (Italy); Hamburger Kunsthalle (Germany); Marfa Contemporary (Texas); Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag (Netherlands); MoMA PS1 (New York); Museu de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo (Brazil), among others. He is represented by Travesia Cuatro and OMR in Mexico, Galleri Nicolai Wallner in Copenhagen, Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, and König Galerie in Berlin. Davila’s work can be found in public and private collections such as Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
This exhibition is curated by Dallas Contemporary Adjunct Curator Pedro Alonzo.
Jose Davila – Directional Energies is supported byGaleria OMR, Mexico City, Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, and Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen.