Praise to the Shadow | Jose Dávila

Del 10 de febrero al 22 de abril de 2012

Praise to the Shadow is a set of marginal works stemming from a fracture found on Dávila’s work platform. These pieces had not been materialized in the past and therefore they were never shown. They constitute his day-to-day imagery, always pending as a record on his log. What image will be rendered by this puzzle after all the pieces, fragments, and longings are gathered together? What do they say? Nietzsche stated that seeing things in a radical, deep way constitutes already a violation, a desire to damage the spirit’s basic volition that always tends to adopt appearance and what lays on the surface. Their speech would be equal to an open cabinet of wonders.

In ancient Greece, the gods used to inhabit defined material spaces. Thus, this would be a space for Artemis, the goddess of borderline places and wild animals, who ruled locations of transit and penumbra. As a goddess of frontiers, occupies tangible spaces that exist only on their constant change and duality, coastlines and the dark side of the moon. This set of elements is made of intercrossing and overlays; the elements’ very own borders make them ambiguous, underlining the fragility of the margin between strictness and desire, between the consciousness and the unconscious mind. Their meanings are continually shifting and intercrossing.