Galleri Nicolai Wallner is pleased to present The fact of constantly returning to the same point or situation, a solo exhibition with Jose Dávila.

Contradictory feelings of weight, tension and levity run throughout Jose Dávila’s works. Taking as a starting point materials and imagery that push the limits of our perception, Dávila creates works that show a delicate and elegant—yet often literal—balancing act between varying elements. The result is atmospheric and almost performance-like, permeating the space through which Dávila’s works are placed, drawing us in as we wait to see if things will stand or fall.

This series of paintings which forms the basis for the exhibition—and also lends its name to the exhibition title—elegantly plays with our existing visual vocabulary and references from the modernist and contemporary world of art. Paintings from the 1910s, 20s and 70s—predominantly circular, including works by the likes of Hilma af Klint, Francis Picabia, Bridget Riley, Sol LeWitt and Frank Stella among others—dance across the canvas.

Working almost like a language in itself, these iconic works are shown in various forms, building towards something. Some are depicted in part or nearly in full, while others are depicted with layers or colours removed, leaving only outlines and selected details. Scale is also at play, as the works come back in iteration throughout the series and sometimes even within the same painting. The resulting imagery feels both intense and open, charged with energy.

This is seen most succinctly with Dávila’s largest work in the exhibition, as a reference is shown in various iterations, almost as if it’s in still in movement. The almost lexicon like system of communication created in Dávila’s imagery gives us a sense of familiarity or belonging, a feeling that we are part of the narrative and invited to follow along.

The title of the exhibition and the series seem to echo this preoccupation to return to something, or rather to a time and a place, a body of work, an idea—a sentiment which holds perhaps an artistic intention, while also doubling as a metaphor about our own lives and directions.

Jose Dávila (b. 1974, Mexico) has had notable solo exhibitions at Museo Jumex (Mexico City), Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg), Marfa Contemporary (Marfa), Camden Arts Centre (London), and many others. His work can be found in the public collections of Centre Pompidou (Paris), Albright Knox Museum (Buffalo), Collection Deutsche Bank (Germany), MUDAM Museum of Modern Art (Luxembourg), Reina Sofia National Museum of Art (Madrid), MALBA Buenos Aires Museum of Latin American Art (Argentina), MUAC Museum of Contemporary Art Mexico City (Mexico City), Collection Inhotim (Brumadinho), and Zabludowicz Collection (London), and Museo Jumex (Mexico City) among others.

Dávila has had recent solo show exhibitions at Sammlung Philara (Dusseldorf), Franz Josefs Kai 3 (Vienna), Museo del Novecento (Florence), Dallas Contemproary (Dallas), and Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Querétaro (Santiago de Querétaro), and has also recently had and a year-long public project in Los Angeles in connection Getty’s Pacific and Los Angeles Nomadic Divison (LAND). Dávila has just opened an expansive solo exhibition at Haus Konstruktiv (Zurich) on view through September 11, 2022.