1 – 30 November 2018

curated by Marlies Wirth

FRANZ JOSEFS KAI 3
1010 Wien

“I’m very interested in the notion that there is poetry embedded in
science, because science is trying to answer fundamental questions.”
Jose Dávila

One could say that humans have tipped the world out of balance
voluntarily; joint effort is constantly in demand in order to
reestablish and maintain the fragile balance of our society. The
interaction of the common factors of physical laws such as force, mass,
acceleration, friction, surface tension, gravity and equilibrium have
been proven empirically and scientifically. Mathematically described in
Newton’s Laws, the state of different bodies in relation to each other
can be determined by a simple rule:

“If object A exerts a force on object B (action), then object B must
exert a force on object A, equal in magnitude but opposite in direction
(reaction).”

For his first solo exhibition in Vienna, Mexican artist Jose Dávila
conceived a site-specific installation consisting of recent works and
works created especially for the exhibition, which correspond to his
many years of practice exploiting the characteristics of opposing
materials and their political potential.

Bodies balance their forces to create stability. In order to counteract
the risk of instability and interrupt the causally linked sequence of
action and reaction, Dávila brings his sculptures into an “impossible
state”, that moment in which all forces are in perfect equilibrium. With
“Joint Effort”, so the title of a series of works, the artist let the
materials “work together” under maximum exertion to keep them in
balance. Titled “The Act of Perseverance” another work subtly challenges
Newton’s law of gravity and reveals the persistence of all matter.

Dávila’s works elaborate on paradoxes that permit the coexistence of
frailty and resistance, rest and tension, geometric order and random
chaos. With that, “A Simple Rule to Remember” not only refers to the
force effect of material and mass in modern architecture and art
history, but also addresses the out-of-joint balance and unsettling
social, political, ecological, and economic developments of our time.