Daniel Silver

Marble busts sit on vertically stacked tree trunks in Daniel Silver’s current solo show. The exhibition occupies a room that the gallery has previously used as an office. Here, the London-based artist also presents a bronze bustlike sculpture resting on a pale wooden base, and a long white sculpture made of plaster and rubber that seems to depict a dying figure or, from further away, the lid of a sarcophagus. This monument seems to participate in a transformative process unfolding slowly over time.

Indeed, it seems that the London-based artist is not concerned with making work that offers a stabile or established form, and nothing in the show seems to have been decided a priori. There are multiple references at play (particularly historical ones); yet Silver’s intention is not to create an atlas of memory but rather to activate the phenomenology of recollection. The artist has previously lived in Israel and Africa, and perhaps this is why he seems interested in the ways in which various symbols and signs belonging to very different cultures can disintegrate. Moreover, he is adept at finding their common origin, discovering the glyphs that constitute the DNA of these forms. On the walls of the gallery, Silver has hung pieces of brightly colored fabric, which look as if they are from Africa. Yet their textures resonate perfectly with the marble sculptures, as if they had always been perceived together.

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.