ACTOS TECTÓNICOS DE DUDA Y DESEO

Travesía Cuatro presents Actos tectónicos de duda y deseo, a solo exhibition by Jose Dávila that brings together a series of recent sculptures executed specifically for the gallery space; in addition, this show means to commemorate the ten years of representing the Mexican artist.

The artworks included in the exhibition refer to balance and equilibrium, notions that are generated during the moment of withdrawal between two opposing forces that remained in conflict, finally ceding. This instant of apparent neutrality simultaneously holds the presence of every possibility. The artist seeks to extend this condition of indetermination taking advantage of technical knowledge, commonly used for maximizing the efficiency of materials; instead Dávila transforms them into useless entities. The structural tools are employed for purely poetic ends.

The endless struggle between architecture and the effects of gravity is synthetized through the usage of industrial construction materials for creating these systems of fragility. Lacking any sort of depth, they are reduced to its superficial extension; under the constant threat of fracture and interruption of the tension structures that are constitutive and provide them with autonomy.
These works encourage the viewer to rethink the meaning of the sculptural, defying the borderline that divides the container from the content, achieving a spatial expansion that modifies the entire architectural experience. For Rosalind Krauss this is a characteristic proper of axiomatic structures, which are constituted by the fusion of architecture and not-architecture. This implies the introduction of foreign forms that reject a functional inclusion, problematizing the obviousness of the field where they are located, reclaiming their own presence.

The specificities of the materials perform an unfolding of the space through a sequence of transparencies and reflections. The pictorial nature of the ratchet straps contrasting with the marble slabs and the sheets of glass and mirror, helps to visualize the delicate communication among the surfaces and their corresponding pivot points.

Dávila proposes an exegesis of minimalist tradition and art history in general, recurring to a sort of cryptic language reserved to the nature of objects, challenging the understanding of the subjective gaze. The sculptures remain as intermediate gestures, somewhere in between of imminent destruction and immutable permanence.
Davila’s work addresses the question about the limits of instrumental values through the use of common materials to create sculptures, objects and installation. Frequently, the nature of these materials approaches both, architecture construction as well as formal artistic production, which subscribe his work to principles coined by Minimalism and Arte Povera. Dávila has also manifested a special interest in the use and occupation of space, issues that have been present throughout his career.
His work has been exhibited in Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo MUAC, Mexico City; Caixa Forum, Madrid; MoMA PS1, New York; Kunstwerke, Berlin; San Diego Museum of Art; Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; MAK, Vienna, Fundacion / Coleccion JUMEX, Mexico City; Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Museu do Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo; The Moore Space, Miami; NICC, Antwerp, among others; and has been featured in international publications such as Cream 3, ed. Phaidon, 100 Latin- American Artists, ed. Exit y Megastructures-Reloaded, ed. Hatje Cantz.

Dávila has been recipient of support from the Andy Warhol Foundation, a Kunstwerke residency in Berlin and the National Grant for young artists by the Mexican Arts Council (FONCA) in 2000. He is a founder member of Oficina para Proyectos de Arte (OPA), in Guadalajara, Mexico.