DIMENSION AND ARCHITECTURE IN JOSÉ DÁVILA, AT ALBARRÁN BOURDAIS
By Álvaro de Benito
The Albarrán Bourdais gallery presents Ensayo de permanencia (Essay on Permanence) at Menorca, a solo exhibition by José Dávila (Guadalajara, Mexico, 1974), which also marks the Mexican artist's first collaboration with the gallery. For the occasion, the artist has conceived most of the exhibition with newly created sculptures and paintings, some of which were made using local materials from the island.
Several of the ideas the artist seeks to consolidate in this exhibition stem from his initial training as an architect. A tour through the works on display reveals Dávila’s ongoing interest in the study of structural and architectural elements, as well as various concepts from both disciplines, such as balance, gravity, and resistance.
In many ways, Dávila sublimates the fundamental principles of technical drawing and construction into three-dimensional space. Thus, the physical mechanisms that allow objects to exist and remain in a given environment are made visible. Underlying this is his interest in megalithic monuments and their construction, connecting with the atavistic and primal aspects of human relations, occupation, the relationship with matter, and the perception of a universe.
The series Fundamental Restlessness occupies the ground and first floors of the gallery. Based on the contrast between theoretically contradictory forces, the sculptures draw on the ancestral practice of the object as a spiritual instrument. The works are recreated in states of unstable equilibrium, where gravity reverses its usual function to become the support and defining feature of the form.
The painting series Fragmentaciones del espacio interior (Fragmentations of Interior Space), a new body of work, is installed in the gallery’s manor house. Dávila frames negatives of geometric shapes on raw linen canvases, delimiting them with white paint. There is a tension between the organic, human nature of the brushstroke and the supposed rectitude and quasi-artificiality of the geometric element, provoking a reflection on the physical and the metaphorical.
In the central courtyard stands Homenaje al cuadrado (Homage to the Square), a mobile made up of concentric squares in chromatic ranges of gray and orange, through which Dávila delves into the chromatic investigations of Josef Albers (Bottrop, Germany, 1888 – New Haven, United States, 1976). In this piece, the German artist’s two-dimensional studies are extended into three-dimensional space. A suspended installation composed of river stones, a wooden log, and a painted beam concludes the exhibition on the second floor. This work revisits the language and results of opposing forces suggested by elements stretched in the air.
Ensayo de permanencia is on view until October 18 at the Menorca location of Albarrán Bourdais, Deià 51, Mahón (Spain).
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