Daniel Horowitz “TOTEM & TABOO: The Pathologies of Liberty”

The West 10th Street Window

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Time Equities Inc. Art-in-Buildings presents the newest exhibition at the West 10th Window: Daniel Horowitz, TOTEM & TABOO: The Pathologies of Liberty.

Daniel Horowitz’s installation is a response to his ongoing engagement with Sigmund Freud’s 1913 text, Totem & Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics. Horowitz’s work is akin to a three-dimensional collage that explores an unfettered range of references, including the aesthetics of cultural appropriation, the legacy of Freudian psychoanalysis as a means to mine the subconscious, and the impact of tribal art on 20th Century Western art movements. The multi-media space Horowitz created in the West 10th Window is a synthesis of these swirling, complex ideas.

The objects in the installation include a modified 1970s television playing an original animation, an Indonesian tribal artifact, a drawing by the artist, and wallpaper made from a work in which Horowitz intervened into a 17th century hand-colored etching by painting in the amorphous, anthropomorphic, purple blob-like creature that inhabits much of his recent work. This creature is a surrogate for the myriad themes and references that form the dense foundation for Horowitz’s practice, synthesized into an abstract being that oozes, rests, observes, and dominates the various scenes he occupies. This figure, which Horowitz describes as a “metastasis of Western Culture” is also a signifier of the artist’s broader investigations into the Anthropocene, the concept that humans now have an equal or greater effect on the planet than nature, ushering us into a new geologic time. The resulting project is a compelling remix of layered references and visual cues.

Daniel Horowitz (born in New York, 1978) works in painting, drawing, collage, and installation. His work is characterized by a unique combination of realism and surrealist abstraction. Horowitz’s work has been the subject of international solo and group exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Warsaw, Berlin, Leipzig, Paris, Split, Barcelona, and Montreal. He graduated from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA (2001).