Artists

Jose Dávila

Press release

An object is never entirely what it appears to be. Its identity is shaped not only by its material composition, but by the relationships it enters into: with other objects, with space, with gravity, and with the histories projected onto it. In José Dávila’s practice, form emerges through these relationships. Concrete, stone, glass, and metal retain their familiar identities even as their arrangements produce new structural and poetic possibilities. Rather than transforming materials into something unrecognisable, Dávila reveals how their meaning and function can change through the act of bringing them together. In Open Ground, Dávila presents two interconnected bodies of work developed over the past two years: paintings investigating the circle throughout art history, and sculptures built from the precarious conjunction of everyday and industrial materials. Both explore how existing elements acquire new significance when removed from their original contexts and placed into unfamiliar relationships. This approach resonates with philosopher Catherine Malabou’s distinction between flexibility and plasticity. While flexibility describes the capacity to adapt without fundamentally retaining the consequences of that change, plasticity involves both the giving and receiving of form, as well as the possibility of its destruction. In Dávila’s sculptures, form emerges not through the physical transformation of materials, but through the relationships established between them. Their arrangements produce temporary structures whose existence depends on the precise negotiation of weight, tension, and gravity. The sculptures begin with a fundamental gesture: bringing two or more elements together. A stone prevents a pane of glass from sliding; the inclination of the glass creates tension in a strap, allowing it to support the structure. In another configuration, the weight of a stone holds a metal element upright. Each component performs a specific function, and the sculpture depends on their cooperation. What appears precarious is, in fact, a carefully negotiated equilibrium in which every element determines the conditions of the others. Dávila’s materials are drawn from both construction and the natural world. Concrete and metal belong to a standardised vocabulary of building materials, while stone carries a much longer history of human interaction with nature. Rather than concealing these origins, Dávila allows the materials to retain their familiar identities. Their transformation occurs through context and function: dismantled, the components return to being stones, pieces of glass, or metal. The sculptural form exists only for as long as their particular arrangement holds. Stability and instability become interdependent conditions, with the possibility of change embedded in the structure itself. Here, Malabou’s concept of plasticity might be understood less as a property of the materials than as something that takes place in the encounter with the work. Although the components return to their original states when the arrangement is dismantled, the experience of their temporary configuration persists. The viewer retains a trace of the form that once existed, even when its physical conditions have disappeared. The act of dismantling thus becomes a kind of destruction of form: not the destruction of the materials themselves, but of the particular relationship that made them into something else. Titles such as Joint Effort and System of Precarity offer further points of entry. In Joint Effort, the elements collaborate to maintain the structure, each performing a necessary role. System of Precarity draws attention to the minimal gestures through which stability is achieved, while suggesting the vulnerability inherent in that achievement. In Newton’s Fable, Dávila engages with the familiar story of the falling apple as a means of explaining gravity. The sculpture similarly makes an invisible force tangible through the arrangement of objects. Rather than depicting gravity, it allows its effects to become perceptible through weight, tension, and spatial orientation. The possibility of collapse is never far removed from the sculptures’ apparent stability. YetDávila is less concerned with catastrophe than with the imagination it provokes: a structure on the verge of falling invites the viewer to anticipate an event that has not yet occurred. Without depicting the body, these arrangements also evoke perseverance, vulnerability, and the effort required to remain standing or support another. The paintings approach related questions through geometric abstraction. Developed through extensive research into the circle throughout art history, they draw on a visual history that includes Frank Stella, Kazimir Malevich, Gustav Klimt, and Julio Le Parc. Dávila brings together circular forms originating in different artistic contexts, constructing compositions around their imagined interactions. In this sense, the circles function almost as found materials from art history, extracted from their original contexts and repositioned within new compositions. Much like the stone, glass, and metal in the sculptures, they retain the traces of their previous identities while entering into new relationships. The paintings and sculptures therefore share a fundamental gesture: the reconfiguration of existing elements into forms whose meaning emerges through their arrangement. The circle becomes both a formal element and a means of considering history as cyclical: forms recur, but acquire new significance through repetition and reconfiguration. Across painting and sculpture, Open Ground considers how form and meaning emerge through relationships between existing elements. Whether negotiating physical forces or reconfiguring art-historical forms, Dávila creates situations in which familiar materials and images remain open to new interpretations. Their identities persist, even as the relationships between them continually produce the possibility of something else. The title Open Ground suggests precisely this condition: a space in which existing forms are neither fixed nor entirely dissolved, but remain available for new arrangements, meanings, and possibilities. Text by Claire Koron Elat