Jeffrey Grove – författare

In a practice spanning nearly two decades, Jose Dávila has created an expressive body of work that explores the visual tropes and iconic symbols of art, architecture, and urban design. Initially trained as an architect and self-educated as a visual artist, Dávila creates sculptures, installations and photographic works that simultaneously emulate, critique, and pay homage to 20th-century avant-garde art and architecture, referencing artists and architects from Luis Barragán to Josef Albers and Donald Judd. Humor and melancholy co-mingle in works that often explore the tension between industrial and organic materials and the forces of compression and balance. This monograph assesses the full scope of Dávila’s practice in all media for the first time, and includes texts attesting to the historical and social dimensions of Dávila’s art. Essays address the artist’s early pieces, his exercises on balance, sculpture, graphics and paintings, and his works in public space.

Landon Metz’s abstract paintings reflect the artist’s deliberate and meditative attention that endures throughout each phase of the artist’s process. From stretching canvas to selecting his specific palette to the actual application of paint and subsequent creation of form, the end result of such intense concentration is an energy that seemingly reverberates from Metz’s work. Curving forms of mesmerizing color on individual canvasses are often exhibited as diptychs and triptychs, or serially installed next to one another in installations to form a larger dialogue, creating pattern and rhythm. Metz’s artworks communicate a contemporary voice engaging directly with the larger dialogue of abstraction’s expansive history. The forms and repetition found in nature are often sources of inspiration for Metz, the artist being from Arizona where rock formations shaped over thousands of years are direct examples of the relationship between time, material, and form. This book brings together numerous examples of this young tour de force’s elegant oeuvre, while exemplifying the ways in which such a spirit of studied precision and deliberation holds enduring value in a world that seems to move faster with each passing day.

Hugo McCloud’s artistic practice developed through his tireless experimentation with materials. The artist finds beauty in the everyday – thus disposable bags, aluminum plates, or bronze panels treated with acid turn into artistic tools. What is unique is not only his inventiveness, but also the broad range of themes he outlines with his art. Hugo McCloud finds expression for social and political problems through his media. He dissects and explores materials and makes them appear in a completely new light. McCloud, who came to art as a self-taught artist, has created a remarkable oeuvre to date, which is now illustrated in this survey publication.

Figuration in Contemporary China Demonstrating a wide array of influences - from Chinese calligraphy to Expressionism - Liu Wei’s work deals with universal themes of humanity. With a career spanning over thirty years, he has proved a master of rendering human flesh and combining figuration with text and abstraction. Liu Wei’s deft grasp of technique and acute awareness of color and composition is evident in his lush landscapes, in which flora and fauna often escape the confines of the canvas and spill out onto the Rococo-style frames. Featuring texts by distinguished specialists in contemporary Chinese art, this first major English-language monograph provides an in-depth look at the historical context and traces his development from his early paintings reflecting disenchantment with political and artistic utopias through the lenses of skepticism and satire, to lush landscapes, striking portraits, and more recent philosophic and contemplative calligraphic works on paper.