Las piedras saben dormir

Special guided visit by José Dávila at EstaciónMAZ, accompanied by JIS and a sound activation by Dos Contrabajos (Quique Rangel and Mike Sandoval), will create a space for dialogue in which they will explore Dávila’s ever-evolving artistic vocabulary, as well as the twenty-five years of work revisited in his exhibition Las piedras saben dormir. Far from being a retrospective, this exhibition proposes an introspective journey through his trajectory, in which the artist reinterprets key works and reactivates his past to reflect on the present and project himself into the future.

José Dávila is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Guadalajara, Mexico. Guided by a structural intuition, Dávila produces constructive situations where tension and calm, geometric order and random chaos, fragility and resistance coexist. His sculptural practice materializes physical processes such as gravity, resistance, and the exchange of forces. This also operates on a symbolic level, as Dávila contemplates the historical evolution of sculpture through situations on the verge of collapse.

Dávila’s work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China; Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico; Franz Josefs Kai 3, Vienna, Austria; Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf, Germany; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, United States; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, The Netherlands; and Museo Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico, among others. His work is included in numerous institutional and private collections, including Inhotim Collection, Brumadinho, Brazil; Pérez Art Museum Miami, United States; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; and the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany.

José Ignacio Solórzano (JIS) is a cartoonist, illustrator, and artist whose work combines humor, scatology, philosophy, intimacy, and poetry. He is the author of thirty-five books, including Los Manuscritos del Fongus (1983), Sepa la Bola(1996), Paso sin ver (2006), Verbos para comenzar (2011), and Sexo. A eso sabe la reina (2014). Together with Trino Camacho, he created El Santos contra La Tetona Mendoza, a comic strip published in La Jornada and El Chamuco, compiled into eleven volumes by Tusquets, and adapted into a feature film in 2012 (Ánima Estudios, Átomo Films, Peyote Films). In 2019, both artists received the Gabriel Vargas Award for over three decades of contribution to political cartooning and humor.

JIS has presented exhibitions such as Quejas y sugerencias a los mismos teléfonos (MUSA, 2001), Si no vas a mi expo en el Cabañas lloraré y lloraré y tu Fonca derrumbaré (Instituto Cultural Cabañas, 2003), and Obviaremos las narices. Descargas moneras con ínfulas retrospectivas (MAZ, 2012). He founded the magazines Galimatías, ¡Cáspita!, La Mano, and La Mamá del Abulón. From 1999 to 2020, he published his comic strip Otro día in Milenio from Monday to Friday, his longest-running series with more than 5,500 panels. He currently hosts La Chora Interminable (Radio UdeG) and La Chora TV (Canal 44), and together with Trino has held over thirty Jams Moneros since 2013. This year, Molusco, a documentary on his career directed by Mauricio Bidault and produced by Vanessa Romo (Erredoce Cine), will premiere.

Dos Contrabajos is a project by Quique Rangel and Mike Sandoval, centered on musical and sound improvisation and intervention. It emerges from a search for interaction with other artistic disciplines, generating diverse sonic and expressive possibilities. Dispensing with the need for a stage or focal point, their interventions unfold through direct engagement with the artworks, their discourses, and the exhibition space that contains them.

— MAZ