Daniel Silver: Studies for Adam and Eve

About

‘Studies for Adam and Eve' by Daniel Silver is the fourth exhibition in the series ‘Cabinets' which explores the working process of internationally renowned artists both emerging and established. ‘Cabinets' is a unique series of exhibitions, which has as its overriding reference point, the Renaissance phenomenon ‘The Cabinet of Curiosity', otherwise known as ‘Wunderkammer'. The term was originally given to rooms displaying objects, antiquities, paintings and other eclectic ephemera from science and the arts and prefigures the birth of the Museum in Western art. Moreover these vitrines also left a spatial legacy credited with the development of Installation art. The sculptures and installations of Daniel Silver, heads and bodies made from an array of different materials, and placed on often elaborate supports in the shape of plinths, chairs and tables seem, at first, rudimentary, as if out of focus, yet close inspection reveals the artist's hand through elaborate detailing and crafting and erasure. The work addresses the figure's spatial embodiment and builds on a number of sculptural traditions, ranging from Antiquity to Modernism and the Contemporary. In his work the human head plays a central and productive role since a face is something that is incomplete, a work in progress that stands in continuous need of being seen or touched or written upon; representation, for Silver, is then a perpetual state of becoming. Previous exhibitions include solo exhibitions at IBID Projects, London; Camden Arts Centre, London; Galleria Suzy Shammah, Milan; Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland and Ancient and Modern in London. Group exhibitions include Newspeak: British Art Now, Saatchi Gallery, London (forthcoming); Art TLV, Tel Aviv, Israel; Origins, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, USA; Sleep of Ulro, A Foundation, Liverpool and London in Zurich, Hauser & Wirth, Zurich. Daniel Silver is represented by IBID Projects, London and Galleria Suzy Shammah in Milan. Each ‘Cabinets' exhibition will consist of three substantial, purpose-built vitrines. The artist's interaction with these generates a project, which, we hope, will uncover new territories of research previously unseen in their work. Furthermore, the cabinets' highly specific format suggests a particular form of audience engagement and approach, thus altering and expanding the works' viewing conditions. Accompanying the series will be a limited edition box set of printed matter, designed by ‘Language of Form‘. Pamphlets will accompany each show with a commissioned text written by Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley, founding Directors of the ‘Museum of Installation' and co-authors of several seminal books on installation art. The next exhibition in the series will be a group show by Neil Hedger, Pippa Gatty and Dan Shaw-Town.