Jose Dávila at Franz Josefs Kai 3, Vienna

Jose Dávila
A Simple Rule To Remember

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.