Artist Jose Dávila Plans a Portrait of LA by Sending Out Blank Sculptures—and Waiting for the Graffiti to Arrive
If you visit the Santa Monica Pier this winter and sit down to look out at the ocean, pay careful attention to what’s underneath you. You just might be sitting on an artwork.
The Mexican artist Jose Dávila has teamed up with the public art nonprofit LAND to create a sprawling, continually unfolding installation that will travel to 20 carefully chosen spots across Los Angeles over the next nine months.
The project—the most ambitious work Dávila says he has ever created—was developed as LAND’s contribution to Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, the Getty-funded initiative sponsoring Latin American and Latino art exhibitions that kicks off across Southern California this week. (The Getty supplied LAND with a total of $160,000 to research and execute the complex project.)
Right now, the work looks simple enough. Installed Tuesday on the edge of West Hollywood Park, Sense of Place (2017) is an eight-foot-square white cube of interlocking parts that looks like what might happen if Donald Judd met Jenga.
Over the next nine months, however, the cube will dissemble. Workers will transport its 40 heavy concrete slabs to different sites across Los Angeles, from Grand Central Market in downtown LA to Langer’s Delicatessen-Restaurant in Westlake. After the last of the slabs depart in March, the park will be empty—but only temporarily. In May, the 40 pieces will reunite at their original location.