Installation view

The gallery inaugurates Daniel Silver's (London, 1972) second solo show in Italy. For this exhibition, the artist's research on three-dimensional figures takes shape starting from copies of Greco-Roman marbles, recently carved in Carrara. Silver retouches the marbles incisively, so as to cancel their original features. For each piece he conceives, a unique pedestal made by heterogeneous materials that is incorporated into the sculpture. Conceptually, in his studio, the artist proceeds to the marble's transformation that has withered in time, but he opposes time's destructive power by refining and gracing them. What arises are anthropomorphic statues of a psychological complexity and a series of watercolors inspired by them.

Silver's work ranges between instinctive expression and conceptual practice, between complete and incomplete forms, between painting and sculpture. The show evokes a fairytale that takes place following the rhythm of the exhibition space. Venus, goddess of beauty and love, welcomes the visitor, escorted by two lions, guardians of Jerusalem. In the second room, we find a prince and his miniature castle that seems to mediate the encounter with humans, a man and a woman, occupied in a silent dialogue. The anthropomorphic sculptures and colorful pedestals further emphasize the fairytale atmosphere. Lionz in Zion appears as the idealized representation of a dream of peace.