News Press/Texts About Projects Work Contact

Exhibition: Perhaps Sunny Days

Podo Museum
Seogwipo-si, Jeju-do, Korea
 

March 2024 - March 2025

Podo Museum: Instagram
Podo Musuem: Facebook

From the Podo Museum website:

Through themes of memory and longing, Perhaps Sunny Days shares stories of empathy and hope for life's most fragile moments.
Works of 10 artists and a new thematic space have been brought together by the PODO Museum to facilitate connections and solidarity between generations with a warm gaze

Participating artists:

Alan Belcher, Louise Bourgeois, Cheryle St. Onge, Yeondoo Jung, Ye-eun Min, Robert Therrien, The Caretaker & Ivan Seal, Davis Birks, Chiharu Shiota, Kyungwoo Chun   

Podo Museum exhibition wall text for the work of Davis Birks:

Davis Birks
USA, b.1957

Reconstructed Landscape 39, 2022, Acrylic paint on salvaged construction ¾” plywood, Dimensions variable.
Reconstructed Landscape 43, 2023, Acrylic paint on wood panel with galvanized wire, Dimensions variable.
Reconstructed Landscape 42b, 2023, Acrylic paint on canvas, 155×6.5×6.5cm.
Adjustable Landscape 3, 2022, Acrylic paint on wood panel with metal bolts, nuts, and washers. Dimensions variable.
Reconstructed Landscape 13 (House on a Hill with a View), 2019, Acrylic paint on salvaged construction plywood, 41×64×39cm.
Reconstructed Landscape 33 (Deconstructed Home), 2021, A landscape, painted, deconstructed and reconstructed, Acrylic paint on salvaged construction wood panel, Dimensions variable.

All works courtesy of the artist. © Davis Birks

What would have been a landscape painting, featuring a clear blue sky and fresh green field, is in pieces like shattered days. The fragmented canvas and plywood come together to depict a scene like nothing before, yet beautiful as ever, as if accepting that things cannot be what they once were. The works in the Reconstructed Landscape series are completed through the process of painting landscapes on salvaged wood panels, followed by a deliberate destruction and subsequent reconstruction of the work.

Even after the paintings lose their traditional role as landscape depictions, they manage to present a new narrative. By exposing the traces of destruction, Davis Birks delivers themes of irreversible time, loss, and yet, hope. The fractured landscapes, with each piece unique in size and shape, speak to the limitation of sensory perception that inevitably results in differences of cognition, as well as the irreversibility of time, and the impossibility of restoring what had once existed.

The work of Davis Birks, primarily based in Mexico, is grounded in multilayered investigations across diverse disciplines. Birks has been an avid student of social interrelations, geopolitics, economics, the environment, history, and more; a versatile artist employing sculpture, installation, painting, photography, and even social practice as the mediums for his artistic expression. He has also remained dedicated to a range of activities for the advancement of contemporary art in Puerto Vallarta since 1987.

The Reconstructed Landscape Series (2019 - )
Artist Statement:
“Memory is a construct of the present.” – Davis Birks

   
Based on the traditional landscape painting, the work of the Reconstructed Landscape Series gives evidence to the process of a landscape created, then destroyed or deconstructed, to be rebuilt again in a distinct form.

The idea of loss and a point of no return are the underlying concepts of this series. The process and end result of these works demonstrate a simple analogy to our relationship with the natural environment  ─  we cannot go back in time to undo the damage that has already been done; we can only move forward and put back together the pieces to reconstruct as best we can.

As agent of the destructive process in the Reconstructed Landscape Series, I remind myself I am in part, the cause of the actual environmental crisis we face.

Through the process of this work the destroyed and deconstructed landscapes are put back together once again, each a record of its own destruction and reconstruction. Through the process of this work, the destroyed and de-constructed landscapes come together again, each as a record of its own destruction and reconstruction, a record, or trace of what was, and the possibilities of moving forward.

Installation views of works from the Reconstructed Landscape Series in the exhibition Perhaps Sunny Days, at the Podo Museum, Korea:

Installation view with works:

Reconstructed Landscape 33 (Deconstructed Home), 2021
Adjustable Landscape 3, 2022
Reconstructed Landscape 13 (House on a Hill with a View), 2019
Reconstructed Landscape 39, 2022

Installation view with works:

Reconstructed Landscape 42b, 2023
Reconstructed Landscape 33 (Deconstructed Home), 2021
djustable Landscape 3, 2022

Installation view with works:

Reconstructed Landscape 43, 2023
Reconstructed Landscape 42b, 2023
Reconstructed Landscape 13 (House on a Hill with a View), 2019
Reconstructed Landscape 33 (Deconstructed Home), 2021

Installation view of Reconstructed Landscape 39, 2022

The artist Davis Birks before the installation Reconstructed Landscape 39, 2022