Travesía Cuatro is pleased to announce the opening of La favola della mela, a solo exhibition by Jose Dávila at Base / Progetti per l’arte, today, Friday September 10, 2021, from 5pm to 8pm.
The project, specifically conceived for the occasion, consists of two site-specific sculptural installations which, crossing the two environments of the non-profit space in Florence, enter into conflict and in harmony with each other at the same time. A suspended rock, a circular metal tube intended for construction, a white balloon, a stone on the ground and finally a bronze apple are the elements the Mexican artist places in a unique dialogue full of visual and physical tensions. The aim is to investigate, from different points of view, recurring themes in his work, such as the notion of balance and estrangement, of sculpture and monument, of structural order and generative chaos, coming to the question of how we...understand the concept of the natural or the modern today. The center of the experience that Dávila proposes to the viewer is linked to visualization, to the desire to challenge or subvert the effects of gravity. It is these tensions - according to the artist - that have shaped and influenced the history of sculpture - from ancient Greece to the Renaissance, from Neoclassicism to Modernism, as well as the manipulation of materials or the synthesis of a specific symbolic force.
La favola della mela ("The Fable of the Apple"), title of the exhibition, is a perfect symbol of how communication systems, including science and art, work. Systems that have the ability to act as narrative vehicles to introduce abstract concepts into the realm of everyday life. The sculptures, within this exhibition, can be seen, like intermediate gestures, halfway between impending destruction and immutable permanence. It is the staging of an instant that expands to infinity. In part it is a critique of the expanded present of the technological today, where everything seems to happen only here and now, but also a way to reflect on our past, on the way of remembering and consequently on the ways of building our future". With these words, Dávila describes his intervention at Base, specifying that "using the apple object as a metaphor for one of the most eminent laws of physics (think of Isaac Newton's theory) and at the same time acting as a symbol of Western Christian humanity (the representation of original sin), I aim to propose an exegesis of the tradition of minimalist sculpture of the 1960s, using a vocabulary oriented to the experience of forms that I highlight by means of the specificity of their materials."
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Jose Dávila (Guadalajara, Mexico, 1974; lives and works in Guadalajara) studied architecture at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente from 1993 to 1998, however he considers himself self-taught in terms of his artistic training and creative processes. Since the beginning of his career, at the turn of the '00s, he has created sculptures, paintings, photographic works, architectural installations and environmental interventions aimed at transforming the perception of space or re-meaning everyday objects. All the variations of a form for him arise from the conditions and characteristics of the materials and means used to manifest and imagine it, thus bringing together fragility and resistance, calm and tension, geometry and chaos, trace and repetition, paradox and norm. His practice is directly connected with the need to deal with the collective memory reservoir of Conceptual Art and Arte Povera, but also with the modern architecture of the past century to investigate the legacy of the modernist movement and how it is possible to translate it, appropriate it and reinvent it today.
Dávila's works can be found in the permanent collections of numerous institutions including: University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Inhotim, Brumadinho, Brazil; Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, New York; the Zabludowicz Collection, London; Museum of Modern Art, Luxembourg. Dávila was the 2014 EFG ArtNexus Latin America Art Award winner, received support from the Andy Warhol Foundation, was awarded a residency at Kunstwerke in Berlin, and the Mexican Arts Council (FONCA) National Grant for young artists in 2000. The Getty Foundation recently awarded him a grant to develop an investigation into his creative research. Among the many international publications in which his work is mentioned are: Cream 3, ed. Phaidon; 100 Latin American artists, ed. Exit and The Feather and The Elephant, ed. Hatje Cantz.
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BASE / Progetti per l’arte is a non-profit artist-run space whose activity, coordinated by Lorenzo Bruni, is promoted and supported by the founding artists with the contribution of the Municipality of Florence - Estate Fiorentina 2021 - and the BASExBASE Association.
The exhibition will be on view until 10 November, 2021.
Visiting hours are Tuesday - Saturday from 6PM to 8PM.
Entrada actualizada el el 10 sep de 2021
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