Pablo Dávila, who studied film and Tibetan Buddhism, has been delving into the concept of time and our perception of it. The three works being exhibited at Aichi Triennale 2022, too, evoke an awareness of various kinds of time, ranging from 1/30th of a second to astronomical scales of time of over 10 billion years.

In Transference Harmonies (Armonías de transferencia) (2022), located at the back of the exhibition gallery, a vast number of randomly generated numbers are converted into patterns in white, black, and two types of gray, which move continuously on a 2.2 x 7.2 meter LED screen. The high resolution is 1800 pixels in height x 5000 pixels in width. Dávila sees this as a film, which shows all possible combinations of the patterns as long as they can be displayed on the screen. The probability of recognizing some image or other, however, is extremely low, and we do not know when it will end. If we take one of these numbers to be our life, and position it within the time of the universe that began with the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, we arrive at the realization of what a minuscule instant it represents.

A friendly reminder (2022), on the other hand, consists of analog tape cut into two-second segments and stitched together, allowing us to hear a repetition of stringed instruments and female vocals. In this work, we are made conscious of the time it takes for a human being to take a single breath. Elsewhere, the two-dimensional work Phase Paintings (the natural flow of forgetting) (2022) depicts a minimalist image created by scorching the canvas with a laser and making holes in it. This work visualizes the effects of the wind, clouds, rain, and tornadoes through a particle system used in computer graphics, and expresses movement itself by superimposing a succession of moments on each other.

This exhibition, in which digital and analog, the body and the universe, the momentary and the eternal, and other opposing concepts are fused into a single space, can be seen as a space for quiet contemplation and meditation on our individual existence.

Selected Works & Awards

Works have been exhibited at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey; José Garcia, México City and Mérida; The Pill, Istanbul; Travesía Cuatro, Guadalajara; and Paul Kasmin, New York, amongst others.

Exhibition

• Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2022
• Transference Harmonies/Armonías de transferencia, 2022
• Photo: ToLoLo studio