CENTRAL WHARF PARK
Jose Dávila
To Each Era Its Art. To Art, Its Freedom., 2020
Constructing the public realm.
Both meditative and provocative, To Each Era Its Art. To Art, Its Freedom. presented a new experiential sculptural work created for Boston by Mexican artist Jose Dávila in response to our times and to a uniquely arboreal space in Downtown Boston. Composed of 21 custom-made concrete shapes that stood for variations of a standard cube, with river boulders balancing on top, To Each Era Its Art. To Art, Its Freedom., created a dynamic field of vibrant red-colored geometric forms, with natural juxtapositions that punctuated and accentuated Central Wharf Park. The work, which intentionally invited the public to sit, rest, and play on and among the sculptural shapes, explored publicness in a time of social and physical distancing and encouraged passers-by and visitors to decide for themselves the function and purpose of the installation. By offering ideas on new modes of construction and innovative placemaking possibilities, this project aimed to demonstrate ways art can shift centers of creative power into the public realm.
LOCATION
Central Wharf Park
Curated by Pedro Alonzo
CENTRAL WHARF PARK
Jose Dávila
Jose Dávila’s work originates from the symbolic languages that function within art history and Western visual culture. These pictorial, graphic and sculptural languages are reconfigured as contradictory and contrasting relations, taking the correspondence between form and content to its limit.
The artist represents these oppositions through different perspectives: the association between images and words; the structural disposition of materials which entails the possibility of a harmonious balance or disarray; the use of peripheral routes in order to define architectural space and the presence of objects. Dávila’s work is essentially a multidisciplinary endeavor that presents a series of material and visual aporias, these paradoxes permit the coexistence of frailty and resistance, rest and tension, geometric order and random chaos.