According to COMA Gallery director Sotiris Sotiriou, Jose Dávila is not the type of artist to turn up before an exhibition saying, “Let’s just chitchat and eat lunch over the next few days and figure out what looks good.” Says Sotiriou, “He’s turning up and we already have schematics. We have plans. We have what angle each sculpture should be facing and in which direction; all of that has already been decided.”

For anyone familiar with Dávila’s poetic, finely calibrated sculptural investigations of spatial perception, balance and equilibrium, this perhaps isn’t surprising. One of Mexico’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, the architecturally trained Dávila’s work was first shown in Sydney in 2020 as part of Brook Garru Andrew’s 22nd Biennale of Sydney: NIRIN. His exhibition at COMA will be his first commercial presentation in Australia.

Dávila’s multifaceted practice includes painting, photographic work and balletic sculptural installations that stack and arrange concrete blocks, locally-sourced found materials including stone, wood, marble, glass and cleverly employed ratchet straps. Reinventing a modernist visual vocabulary that references the work of artists including Josef Albers, Donald Judd and Richard Serra, Dávila’s works are imbued with stillness and tension, apparent fragility and literal weight.

The exhibition will feature a series of concrete and stone sculptures and raw linen paintings that explore the geometric formation of the circle, part of are curring interest for Dávila that is echoed in his use of metal cylinders and found rocks and river stones.

“There’s this idea of unity and balance [in his work]…You can encounter this sculpture, an amalgamation of different objects, and feel instantly that it has equilibrium,” explains Sotiriou. “It’s an optical effect—400kg of concrete and rock held together with a ratchet strap?! But what’s so interesting about it is that people still see it and go, ‘Whoa, that is true balance.’”

Physics of Uncertainty
Jose Dávila
COMA Gallery
On now—10 May

This article was originally published in the May/June 2025 print edition of Art Guide Australia.