Artist:
José Dávila (born 1974 in Guadalajara, Mexico; lives and works in Guadalajara, Mexico).

Materials:
Archival pigment prints.

Description:
“Dávila’s practice has explored spatial occupation and the transitory nature of physical structures. Drawing on his formal training as an architect, Dávila creates sculptural installations and photographic works that simultaneously emulate, critique, and pay homage to 20th century avant-garde art and architecture. Referencing artists and architects from Luis Barragán and Mathias Goeritz to Donald Judd, Dávila’s work investigates how the modernist movement has been translated, appropriated, and reinvented.”
—”José Dávila,” Sean Kelly website.

“Artist Jose Dávila has physically cut out, from photographs, over 100 of the world’s most famous and beloved buildings and structures. Following in the footsteps of his appropriationist forbears from the 1970s and 80s such as renowned artists Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince, and staking a claim for the hand-produced in today’s digital world, Davila takes prosaic architecture so well-known it’s largely taken for granted, and reformats it with a renewed appreciation occurring as a result. Long interested in the relationship between built space and physical place, Dávila saw that by focusing on the silhouette of recognizable architectural icons in unrealistic proportion to their immediate environment, their grandeur was heightened beyond their inherent allure. By cutting the images out by hand, he stays connected to the idea of physically manipulating space-just as architecture itself does.”
—”There But Not,” Penguin Random House Books website.