Totem & Taboo, an exhibition of new works by Daniel Horowitz, will open on November 12th at Tillou Fine Art, located in the gallery’s historic Brooklyn brownstone. The exhibition will feature works on paper and paintings on raw linen stitched with textiles, juxtaposed with ethnographic artifacts from various private collections. Totem & Taboo will be accompanied by a series of salon-style interdisciplinary conversations and happenings.
The exhibition – Horowitz’s second solo show in New York – draws from Sigmund Freud’s 1913 seminal book, Totem & Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics. Bringing together works that explore the parallels between the material legacy of animist cultures and psychoanalysis as a means of understanding the subconscious, Totem & Taboo investigates the nature of re-appropriation, the heritage of colonialism, and the West’s fascination with primitive art. The exhibition explores the ambiguity of the post-colonial identity in the Western world, while also paying homage to the influence of tribal art on modernism.
To further explore the questions raised by the artist, topics such as planned obsolescence, cultural re-appropriation, and controversies in the fields of science and psychology will be investigated during monthly Saturday Salons, a platform for cross-disciplinary conversations and collaborations including lectures, performances, concerts, and panels.
