Jose Dávila (Guadalajara, 1974) has developed a vast sculptural oeuvre regulated by a series of work propositions that explore the relationships between materials and objects, symbols and meanings, to produce new articulations between them. In the project Pensar como una montaña (Thinking like a mountain), produced specically for Museo Amparo, Dávila starts with the question about the material and phenomenological quality of the stone, one of the original elements, not only in sculpture but also culturally. An element that arises from nature and is in nature; also used by human beings to erect its buildings, while in time it survives as a vestige. The research undertaken by the artist for this project, originates from a wide range of visual and historical references, as well as from a reection on the production processes where the work in the Studio plays a central role to investigate and experiment.

Dávila’s work establishes a dialogue with art history through quotes, allusions, and winks. Specically, he incorporates in his work the reections raised by minimalism, geometric abstraction, as well as Brazilian concrete art, constructivism, and brutalism. However, it also appeals to literature and poetry, to its visual and mental images, its instantaneous and at the same time durational condition. Dávila delves into the different powers of matter and form, the frequencies of transmission of the meanings they entail, as well as their relationship with the exhibition space. The artist reinterprets the link between the object and its symbolic content to talk not only about the subject but about our relationship with objects. It produces reections that inquire and deepen the specicity of the subject through a work that is both methodical and intuitive. The output responds to the context but it does so in an abstract way, without abandoning the temporal sense of the materials it uses.