Guadalajara, Mexico, 1974
Lives and works in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Jose Dávila’s work, nurtured by his architecture formation, makes constant reflections on modern architecture and urbanism, contemporary art, its forecasts and failures. With references such as architectural utopias or milestones in twentieth century art, Dávila approaches the vital contradictions between form and function. His hybrid structures can become cold or warm, light and heavy, producing signs of functionality, which are impossible to discern, and whose meaning varies between architecture and art.
Humor, melancholy and a sense of loss are notions expressed by the artist through elemental forms and materials, referencing the work of key artists and architects in the history of art. By appropriating the series “Homage to the Square” by Josef Albers, Donald Judd’s “stacks”, or cutting out the figure of Yves Klein jumping to the void or Piero Manzoni signing the back of one his “living sculptures”, Dávila reflects on the definition of conceptual art that states that it is the content and not the form what gives importance and meaning to a work of art.