Jose Dávila
Directional Energies
Dallas Contemporary
January 2020 - December 2020
For the site-specific exhibition, Dávila makes use of the museum’s open floor plan, industrial concrete foundation, and high ceilings as part of his creative process. The raw open space, resembles the artist’s studio in Guadalajara. Using locally sourced materials from Dallas-area quarries, the artist created balancing and stacked sculptures composed of steel I-beams, cables, boulders, and other objects.
Museum visitors can stand beneath typically hidden structural elements 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 as well as 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.
One of my favorite works in the Jose Davila exhibition is the sculpture “Newton’s Fault”. This elaborate work combines a hanging I-beam, with a balancing I-beam structure both of which are counterbalanced by a pair of rocks. The centerpiece is a red apple that references Newton’s famous myth of the fruit falling on the scientist’s head while he contemplated the universe on his family farm. Newton was on leave from his studies at Cambridge due to an outbreak of the bubonic plague. Although there are no historical records specifying that an apple fell on Newton’s head, he was drawn to ponder the phenomenon of gravity when he observed the fruit falling straight down instead of falling sideways or even going up into the sky. During the installation of “Newton’s Fault”, Davila mentioned his fascination with the myth of Newton’s Apple as an ideal vehicle to propagate his theory. Davila suggested that a simple anecdote is a more effective means to convey a complex idea than scientific theories accompanied by mathematical equations. Perhaps the real genius was inventing a story that the public could relate to at a time when scientific observation conflicted with religious doctrine.
Adjunct Curator: Pedro Alonzo
IG @josedavila / josedavila.mx
Photo credit: Kevin Todora